


The Devil's Right There in the Details

by missparker



Category: The Closer
Genre: Alternate Season/Series 05, Elysian Fields, F/F, Maternal Instinct, Products of Discovery, Red Tape, Smells Like Murder, Waivers of Extradition, Walking Back the Cat, identity theft
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-04
Updated: 2021-02-27
Packaged: 2021-03-09 04:40:34
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 37,716
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27378868
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/missparker/pseuds/missparker
Summary: Brenda folds Captain Raydor into her division to save her from a worse fate. She has good intentions but it turns out she doesn't much like Raydor and Raydor doesn't like her, either.
Relationships: Brenda Leigh Johnson/Sharon Raydor
Comments: 302
Kudos: 228





	1. truth is like blood underneath your fingernails

_Don't punish yourself, punish yourself_  
_Truth is like blood underneath your fingernails_  
_And you don't wanna hurt yourself, hurt yourself_  
_Looking too closely_

**Looking Too Closely - Fink**

*

Technically it’s the first day of autumn but Brenda doesn’t think much about seasons anymore. It will be hot enough today that she’ll sweat through whatever foundational layers she puts on. Plenty of people had told her to layer because the weather can be unpredictable and the temperature can drop fast at night, but she finds that layers are better on the hottest day. Something absorbent between her and her dry clean only. 

Today she puts on her bra, a beige tank top, and then her blouse and her blazer. A skirt without hose, though it would feel better with hose, if only to save her feet. 

It’s still dark as she dresses, Fritz asleep in the bed. She gives herself just the dim closet light to navigate by. He’s been sick with a cold, has stayed home two days straight. He says he’ll go in today but he’s still snoring loud enough to rattle the windows so she highly doubts that. 

She’s considering shoes when her phone vibrates against the nightstand. The higher heels will look better, the kitten heels will be more comfortable. They’re in the middle of a case, so she’ll be running around all day. 

She goes to get her phone and takes it into the bathroom with her so she can read it in peace while she brushes her teeth and considers her makeup. She suspects it’s some update from her team, though it’s not even eight am yet, so it’s a bit early for that. 

But it’s not Provenza or Gabriel.

It’s a text from Will Pope informing her of a nine am meeting. 

She thinks about what trouble she could be in now as she brushes her teeth and applies her eyebrow pencil, but she just doesn’t think she’s done anything lately to warrant a dressing down. Which means that he wants something. 

She puts on the higher heels.

On the drive in, she looks around for signs of fall. A brown leaf or crisp breeze but there’s only sunshine. A relentlessly blue sky and only a few wisps of white clouds. She sees people in shorts, a jeep in front of her on the freeway with a surfboard strapped to the top of it. She’s lived here a few years now and has never even gone to a beach that wasn’t about working a case. 

She’s almost late. She’s in the parking garage at five till nine and in the building by nine am so she thinks that counts. Besides, Will never starts meetings on time, especially first thing in the morning.

And yet, when she comes into his outer office, his administrative assistant says, “He’s waiting for you,” without even looking up at her and the door to his office is open.

“Close it behind you,” he says, so she does. She sees him glance at his watch.

“Traffic,” she says, defensively. “And you didn’t give me much warnin’.”

“You’re fine,” he says. “Have a seat.” 

Now this is an interesting version of Will Pope. She mostly sees him angry at her or sometimes, wanting something from her and both of those are extremely different than the closed off man sitting before her.

“Last night, your squad rolled out to investigate a double murder. Officer Jeffrey Holeman went to the home of two other officers and killed them,” Pope says. “The deceased are Timothy Kellerman and Jamal White.”

“Jesus,” Brenda says. And then she registers what he said. “Major crimes rolled out without me? Why on earth didn’t anyone call me? Oh for heaven's sake, I’m going to be so behind!” She starts to stand up.

“Sit down,” he says. “They didn’t call you because I instructed them not to. Try to focus on what I’m saying. Holeman was recently on unpaid leave for another incident of violence but was cleared by Internal Affairs to return to duty.”

“Okay,” Brenda says, sinking back into the uncomfortable office chair. “What does this have to do with Major Crimes leaving me behind?”

“This is obviously going to be a PR nightmare,” Pope says, breezing past her question. “What I would like, Chief Johnson, is for you to quietly and discreetly look into this matter and figure out who is responsible for this travesty.”

She shrugs. “Jeffrey Holeman is responsible for this travesty,” she says. “Case closed.”

“Officer Holeman obviously had some underlying issues that were missed in the investigation of his conduct,” Pope says. 

“Will,” she says, rubbing her forehead. She could really use some coffee and a muffin. She’s already feeling a little jittery. What did she have for dinner last night, besides wine? Something from the freezer that went right into the microwave. “Obviously someone in Internal Affairs signed off on his return to work. Who runs FID?”

He sighs. “Captain Raydor,” he says. “But marching into her office and telling her that she’s responsible for the death of two officers is not going to avoid a PR nightmare.”

“Yeah, but if Raydor signed off then you know who signed off, I just don’t think this is the mystery you say it is,” Brenda says.

“You’ll speak to Lieutenant Elliot who ran the investigation,” Will says. “You will figure out how involved Raydor was but you will not speak with her directly.” 

Brenda’s mouth falls open but he holds up a finger to stop her. “I’m not asking for a favor, I’m giving you an order. You will speak with Elliot. You will find out where the breakdown happened. You will stay away from Raydor. You have 72 hours and then you will report back here. Is that understood?”

She can feel herself making an unpleasant expression. “Am I even allowed to work alongside my squad? I’m going to need access to the scene, to Holeman’s residence… I’m going to need more information than readin’ one FID report.”

“Provenza is running the case and it is my extreme preference that Major Crimes not know what you’re doing,” Pope says. “Aside from that, it’s your case. You know how to get results. Do what you need to do.”

“And I assume I’m only my own in figuring out what to say to them to make that fly?” she asks dryly.

“You assume correctly,” Pope says. “Dismissed.”

oooo

There’s no way she can manage this on her own, just no way that the whole squad won’t start trying to figure out what she’s doing. She needs a mole on the inside. She thinks about telling Sergeant Gabriel everything, but he’s still out of sorts about Daniels transferring away, so she pulls aside Sanchez. 

“What’s up, Chief?” he asks, as she closes her office door behind her. 

“Pope wants me to figure out why Holeman cleared his internal investigation and managed to kill Kellerman and White,” she says. “And he wants me to pin it on FID.”

Sanchez blinks as he processes this and then says, “Why?”

“I’m not sure,” she admits. “Something went wrong in that investigation, something made them clear an unstable man for duty. The squad needs to keep processing the scene, obviously, but I’m gonna need someone who knows what I’m doin’ and today, that’s you.” 

“I’m honored, ma’am,” he says dryly. 

“He also told me I can’t talk to Captain… uh… Rordan?”

“Raydor,” he corrects. 

“Yeah, which makes me think she’s the only person I have to talk to.”

“You don’t know Captain Raydor?” he asks.

“No,” she says. “Do you?”

He smirks. “Oh yeah.”

She ignores that and starts pacing a circle around her office while he leans against the filing cabinet. 

“I need to talk to Elliot, I need to go through the investigation,” she says. 

“What do you want me to do?” he asks. 

“I need you, Julio, to very, very carefully figure out any connection between Will Pope and Jeffrey Holemam,” she says. “No matter how thin.”

“I can do that,” he says. “But…”

“What?”

“That’s usually Gabriel’s thing,” Sanchez says. “You don’t want him on this?”

She looks out her office wall, through the blinds, to see David sitting morosely at his desk, staring at the blotter while Provenza drones on at the white board, pictures of two dead officers behind him. Not to mention Holeman’s mugshot. 

“Not this time,” she says. 

oooo

Elliot isn’t happy about turning over his files to her, but he does so without verbal complaint. She makes concessions she might not otherwise if this were any other case. She meets with him in one of FID’s interview rooms. They pass Captain Raydor’s shut door. The office looks dark, but he doesn’t offer whether his boss came into work today and Brenda doesn’t ask. 

“Okay,” she says. “Why don’t you… just, walk me through it.”

“Walk you through it?” Elliot asks with some incredulity. “There’s three boxes worth of stuff for Holeman alone.”

“How many investigations is that?” she asks.

“I mean, it depends, but for him, we’ve done eleven.”

“Eleven?” she asks. “Eleven internal investigations into his conduct and he was still employed?”

“You can’t… every time someone fires their weapon… your own Julio Sanchez has fifteen, you can’t judge an officer simply on the number of times…” Elliot sputters.

“All right, all right,” Brenda says, rubbing her forehead. She’s got a headache now, one from a lack of caffeine. “Let’s focus on the ones that maybe were the most concerning.”

“He had a history of violence,” Elliot concedes. “Excessive force. Threatening language. At least four of those cases, including the most recent one.”

“What was the connection to Officers Kellerman and White?” Brenda asks.

“It’s sort of… Kellerman and White rented a house together. Nothing hinky, just roommates,” Elliot says. 

Brenda narrows her eyes at him. 

“They had a third room they were renting out,” he says. “I can’t say for sure, but I think that Holeman wanted to rent it and they said no.”

“So he shot them to death?” she asks. 

Elliot shrugs. “He isn’t a particularly well liked guy. I wouldn’t want to go home to him.” 

They spend around an hour combing files together. He answers her questions here and there, but from what she can tell, ten of the eleven reports are well done, thorough, within acceptable margins. But the final one seems rushed and incomplete.

“Okay,” she says, when he’s put everything back into the cardboard boxes labeled with Holeman’s name. “One last question.”

He just looks at her, nods nearly imperceptably. He knows what she's going to ask. 

“You lead this last investigation,” Brenda says.

“Yes,” he agrees.

“So who, ultimately, signed off on Holeman returning to duty?” she asks.

He sighs, shifts in his chair, scratches the back of his head and winces as he answers.

“Captain Raydor,” he says. “It was her call.” 

She nods. “Okay, thank you. I think we’re done here for now. Thank you so much for your help.” 

He nods, leaves her alone in the room to return his desk or wherever he’s off to. She sits at stares at the packed up boxes and thinks hard about what to do next. 

oooo

Julio comes over to her place after work with an unlabeled file folder. It is unfortunate that he arrives in the middle of dinner, but it can’t be helped. Fritz is obviously feeling a little better, though he’s still shuffling around in his flannel pajama pants and a white t-shirt with bedhead. And his nose is running because he keeps sniffling. But well enough to throw together a creamy, chicken filled casserole topped with biscuits. 

He likes to cook, or he says he does anyway. 

“Sorry,” she says, opening the back door for Julio. It opens right into the kitchen and he hesitates.

“Lieutenant,” Fritz says in greeting. 

“Oh, uh, sorry,” he says.

“No, no, come in,” she demands. “You want some dinner? Fritz made a whole heap.”

“Uh,” Julio says. “No, that’s okay.”

“Oh no,” Fritz says. “Please. I _insist_.” The legs of his chair screech as he pushes back to get another plate. They all watch him bring it to the table and then slop some casserole onto it. Julio takes the plate and sets it down. Fritz flops back into his own seat and so Brenda reaches behind her to pull out the drawer and get him a fork.

“We’re on a deadline,” Brenda says to Fritz, but he just shrugs and resumes eating. 

Julio takes the fork and hands her the folder in return.

“Uh… you want me to…?” he asks.

“Yeah,” she says.

“Okay, well, Jeffrey Holeman was born in Redlands and went to CSU Northridge, moved to LA after that, so he's a local,” Julio says. He pauses to take a bite and then makes a pleased expression. “Good,” he says to Fritz.

“Thanks,” Fritz says.

“Jeffrey Holeman has never been married but does have one son with, uh…let me have that back, please, Chief.” 

She hands him the folder and he glances at his notes.

“Okay, one son with Alicia Witherson. Alicia Witherson is the daughter of Cheryl and David Witherson. Cheryl Witherson is the sister of… any guesses?”

“Estelle Pope,” Brenda says. 

“Estelle Pope,” Julio confirms. “How’d you know?”

“Lucky guess,” she mutters. “So Estelle says what, my sister called me crying because the deadbeat father of my grandson is in trouble at work? And gets her Assistant Chief husband to make it all go away?”

“He was on suspended pay,” Julio says.

“So no child support,” Brenda says. “Ugh, Jesus Christ, Will! You dumbass.”

“He always was a dumbass, Bren,” Fritz offers.

“Thank you,” she says to him. She turns back to Julio. “So, Pope calls down to FID and says clear this guy or else and they do and then he kills two fellow officers.”

“No wonder Pope doesn’t want you to talk to Captain Raydor,” he says. “If he wants her to take the blame, he doesn’t want you to know he forced her. Or why.” 

“I don’t understand why he picked me, though,” she says. “I mean, he had to know I’d figure it out.”

“He picked you,” Fritz says, “Because he always banks on your past relationship and your loyalty! He cuts you favors all the time, Brenda. In his mind, you owe him. And if you publicly bring forward what he did here, he’s going to stop doing that. That is why he picked you.” 

She stares at Fritz. He stands, takes his plate with him, and disappears into the living room. When she looks back at Julio, his mouth is full again. 

“Well,” she says. “I have to talk to Captain Raydor.” 

Julio swallows, says, “But Pope said you couldn’t ask her anything.”

“I don’t need to ask her anything,” Brenda says. “I already know what happened. But he’s going to try to pin these deaths on her and she didn’t do anything wrong. I can’t make it so Jeffrey Holeman didn’t kill those officers. I can’t undo Chief Pope ordering her to clear an unstable man. But I still might be able to save her job.”

“You don't know her,” Julio says.

Brenda shakes her head. "So?"

“She’s very… by the book,” he says. “I can’t imagine she’s taking this well.” 

“Send me her address, will you?” Brenda asks. “You have it?”

“I can get it,” he says. 

“Thanks,” she says. 

He scoops what’s left on his plate into his mouth and sets the plate in the sink.

“See you tomorrow, Chief,” he says, and lets himself out. 

oooo

She’s been letting Provenza run their case, provided he checks in with her a couple times a day. He’s doing everything right, so she fights the urge she has to go in and take over everything. She can’t be in two places at once and this morning, she’s parked on the street, gazing up at a tall building. When Julio had forwarded the address (a screen shot of his text exchange with Provenza in which he had her listed as _The Ice Queen Cometh_ ), she’d expected a house, not a condo.

It’s a nice building, clean lobby. Not so nice that she has to be buzzed in, but well-maintained and the doors to the units look extremely hard to break into. 

She rides the elevator up, up, up and then double checks the unit number before exchanging the phone in her bag for her badge.

She knocks hard three times and then waits.

It’s not Sharon Raydor who answers, she’s almost sure of it. This woman is too young, much younger than Brenda. In her twenties, probably.

Brenda holds up her badge and says, “My name is Deputy Chief Brenda Leigh Johnson. Is this the residence of Captain Sharon Raydor?”

The woman sighs and calls over her shoulder. “Mom! You were right. They’re here.” She turns back and looks at Brenda, shrugs and says, “Come in, I guess.” 

The condo is larger than she expects, full of natural light and open. Captain Raydor is sitting at her dining room table with a mug in front of her. Brenda tries hard to think if they’ve met, if she’s even ever seen her face to face but she truly doesn’t think so. She’d remember her dark auburn hair, her glasses, how very pale she is for a resident of Los Angeles.

“Captain Raydor,” she says, on the way to introducing herself.

But Raydor holds up her hand, interrupts her and says, “You’re not supposed to be here, Chief Johnson.” 

Now Brenda isn’t sure if they’ve met or not, again. Captain Raydor seems to know who she is, but maybe she’d just heard her at the door. It doesn’t matter, she supposes. Might as well cut to the chase.

“I’m not here to ask you anything,” Brenda says. “I already know what happened.”

Raydor scoffs, like she’s sure that isn’t the truth. She waits a beat to see if she’ll get an invitation to sit but they both just look at her. 

She just pulls out a chair and sits. The daughter does too, so they’re on either side of Raydor. She’s obviously not going to work today, either. She’s in leggings and a t-shirt that is so thin, she can see the nude bra beneath. And she looks like she’s been crying. Brenda can see that, even through the glasses. Here is a woman who thinks she’s going to be fired.

“FID opens the eleventh investigation into the conduct of Jeffrey Holeman who now has a well-documented history of escalating violence,” Brenda says. “Lieutenant Elliot recommends he not be cleared for duty. Jeffrey Holeman has already completed two anger management courses to no avail, so Elliot’s recommendation is termination.” 

“Yes,” Raydor says softly. 

“Mom, your union rep said not to talk to anyone,” the daughter reminds her.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t catch your name,” Brenda says turning to her. 

“Emily,” she says. 

“Emily, I’m not here on behalf of management, she doesn’t have to worry about that. I’m not here at all, officially,” Brenda says. 

“Okay,” Emily says.

“So Elliot brings to you this completely reasonable recommendation and before you can file the report, Assistant Chief Pope steps in and orders you to clear Jeffrey Holeman, to alter the official recommendation, or else life for you becomes difficult. In a job, I imagine, that is already not easy.”

“No,” Raydor agrees. 

“And so you do it because you have a mortgage and a life and you do more good than bad most days,” Brenda says. “Your superior ordered it done and you did it.”

Sharon hesitates and then nods slightly.

“And then Holeman, who is unhinged, kills two officers over a squabble because he is a violent person who should not be employed by the LAPD.” Brenda watches Raydor’s eyes well up again behind her glasses. Emily reaches out to touch her mother’s arm in sympathy. “That’s when Will Pope called me, by the way. Because he knew he’d screwed up. Captain Raydor, I’d like to tell you why Pope overrode that recommendation, if you don’t already know.”

She sniffs, takes a breath. “I don’t.”

“Holeman is Chief Pope’s wife’s sister’s daughter’s baby daddy,” Brenda says. 

Raydor barks out an involuntary laugh. “Seriously?”

“He was sure that when he ordered me to make sure you took the blame, that either I wouldn’t dig deep enough to find the connection or I wouldn’t care,” Brenda says. “But two officers are dead and I care very deeply about that. So.” 

“So,” Raydor says. “What now? Are you here to terminate me?”

“No,” Brenda says. “I can’t save FID from taking the brunt of this nightmare, I simply don’t have that much power.” She reaches into her tote bag and pulls out a manila folder, slides it to Sharon. “But I think I can probably do this.” 

Sharon takes it, opens it and sees what’s inside. Regards it with some confusion.

“Transfer paperwork,” she says finally.

“I have a hole in my division from Detective Daniels,” she says. “Come work for me.” 

“You want me to go from running a department to demoting to detective?” she asks. “That’s absurd!”

“I worry for your job, Captain, and I worry for the quality of life you face if the union helps you to retain it. Your reputation will take a hit, Chief Pope will make sure of it,” Brenda says. “And I think you’re sitting here cryin’ at your table because you know it, too.” 

Raydor slumps a bit here, her body language betraying her. 

“I think I can help you keep your rank, but no, you’d be working for me in my division. It’s all I can offer, but it’s a good division and I’ll treat you fairly,” Brenda says. “If you fill out the paperwork now, I can sign it and submit it before I go talk to Pope about what I found. It would be better, I think, to have that ball rolling already so it doesn’t look like… a reaction.”

Raydor looks down again and seems to consider it. “No time to think on it, then.”

“You could still retire,” Emily points out.

“Not comfortably,” she says, tired sounding, like they’ve had this conversation a couple times already. “Okay. I mean, what choice do I have?”

Brenda smiles in what she hopes is a comforting way. She hopes it looks better than how it feels, like skin stretched taut over a clenched jaw.

oooo

She worries that bringing someone not particularly well-liked into the division is going to upset things in ways she can’t yet anticipate, but it’s too late now. Sharon Raydor is certainly not a popular woman, but it’s rare that a woman even achieves the rank of Captain in this organization, so she must be good at her job. The fact that Brenda even knows the name of the first woman to achieve her own rank (Peggy York’s picture is still hanging somewhere, she’s sure she’s seen it), shows that women achieving anything in this LAPD is rare. 

It’s too late now. She’d filed the paperwork for Captain Raydor and she’s on her way to see Will now, out of time. She’d stalled as much as possible, but his administrative assistant had called her and said softly, “He’s not in a great mood today.”

“When is he?” Brenda had asked and she’d chuckled. 

In the elevator, her bag on her shoulder, she steels herself. She really hopes this works. 

Will is standing over his desk, angrily signing something and then slamming the folder closed when she comes in, shuts the door behind her. 

“Finally,” he says. “I thought you’d be here first thing in the morning, you know.”

“Did you?” she asks. “Well I’m here now.”

“Good,” he says. “I’ll just sign off on your report that says FID is responsible, and we can get back to our days.” 

“Sure,” she says. “Right after you sign off on Captain Raydor’s transfer request.” 

He’s barely looked at her but his head whips up now. “Sorry?”

“It’s certainly your prerogative to use your influence and power to generate the narrative you want,” she says. “But I cannot in good conscience let you pin it on that woman.”

He gapes at her. 

“Did you really think I wouldn’t do my due diligence?” she asks. “I know exactly what happened. I know who Jeffrey Holeman is to you and to Estelle. I know why you asked him to be reinstated. I know the hot water you’d be in if that got out.”

“Chief Johnson-” he says, his face turning red. He’s gearing up to blow his stack for sure.

“But personally, I really don’t have a lot to gain from outing your mistake publicly,” she says. “Except that, the only thing Captain Raydor did wrong was follow your order and she doesn’t deserve to have the blood of two officers on her hands. I have a vacancy in my division and she’s going to fill it. So sign my paper, Will, and I’ll sign yours.”

He clears his throat, his eyes flashing. He rubs his hand over the back of his head and makes a small noise of disbelief. Finally, finally he settles on what to say. “Do you… do you even know her? Why do you even care enough to do this for her?”

“She’s a woman,” Brenda says. “And so am I. And there doesn’t need to be a second reason in this force.” 

He shakes his head. “Jesus, Brenda.” But he shrugs. What can he do, exactly? She’s hoping for nothing. “Fine. I’ll put it through.” 

“Thank you,” she says. 

She knows that their relationship has taken a hit, but she hopes he realizes it’s because of what he did and not what she’s done. 

If he’s smart enough.

In the murder room, she pulls Julio aside and says, “Call Captain Raydor and tell her it worked.”

“What worked?” he asks.

“She’ll know,” Brenda replies. "Thank you so much, Julio. Thank you." 

And with that, she locks herself into her office.


	2. 'cause there's something to be said about being strong

_Everything in this house breaks_  
_What wouldn't under the weight_  
_Everything in this house goes away_  
_You're going to fix it_  
_Or so you say_

**Hard on Everyone - Kathleen Edwards**

*

Sharon is awake well before her alarm. Early enough that she watches the sky go dull and murky with daylight. She spends at least forty minutes thinking about how unfair it is that you can be going along doing your job, doing it well, and someone can just yank everything right out from beneath you. 

What if she had just defied his order? Would her life be any worse than it is right now? Monday morning, having to drag into a new job she doesn’t want and where no one wants her, heavy in a shroud of disgrace?

She gets out of bed, turns off the alarm before it can sound, and goes to start the coffee pot, leaving her sheets rumpled behind her. 

Chief Johnson and the Major Crimes division had attended the funerals of Jamal White and Timothy Kellerman on Saturday and Sunday afternoon respectively, but the Chief had told Sharon over the phone that it was best if she didn’t go. The news had picked up the story of two officers being gunned down by one of their own and while the LAPD as a whole is taking some heat for lack of internal oversight, everyone on the inside knows to blame FID. 

“Just lay low, hmm?” the Chief had said, sounding distracted, right before hanging up.

It’s one thing for people to blame Sharon or to be disappointed in her conduct. She’s spent ten years in Internal Affairs, making unpopular choices, she’s used to that. No, what’s hard to bear now is that people are going to laugh at her. Take delight in her misfortune. Meanwhile, Will Pope goes on like nothing has happened. He will make a few empty promises publicly about how the LAPD will tighten the reins internally and then go home to his wife. 

Emily had offered to stay and see her through a few more days, but she’d already changed her flight back to New York once and so Sharon had declined the offer, apologized again that the collapse of her professional life had eclipsed their visit, and driven her to LAX. She loves her daughter, loves both of her children, but there’s some comfort in having the condo to herself again. It’s quiet when she goes to bed, it’s quiet when she wakes up again. She likes order and predictability, though both are seeming impossible to hold onto. 

Once the coffee pot chugs to life, she goes to take a shower. Jackson used to like to take the coffee mug into the bathroom with him, into the shower, even, if there was a spot to set it where it would stay dry, and so she always waits for coffee until after her shower. She’s pivoted her whole life to avoid reminders of her husband. At least that’s a skill she has already honed. Perhaps it can be put to good use in her new role in Major Crimes.

She tries not to cry in the shower, but maybe a few tears seep out. The hot water and the steam seem to loosen something inside her; the warmth makes her soft. She reaches up, yanks the shower head out of its holder and brings the spray closer to her face. Washes it all away.

oooo

She’s on time, nearly ten minutes early, but most of the division is already at their desks. She knows them all, some better than others. Some have crossed her path many times. Others, like Michael Tao, she doesn’t know quite as well. She hopes that serves her well. She hopes she can find one ally in this foreign land. 

Louie Provenza gives her a hard stare, long enough that it makes her feel like she’s on the other side of an interrogation table. “In there,” he says, gesturing to the office, when he’s had his fill. Andy Flynn watches her, moving the toothpick in his mouth from one side to the other. Still on the wagon, then. Recovering alcoholics often develop an oral fixation. Drunks just drink.

She crosses the bullpen with her bag on her shoulder and her light coat still on, her heels thudding loudly against the linoleum. They all watch her. 

Chief Johnson’s office is a fish tank. Walls made of glass covered by dusty and dated blinds. She’s sitting at her desk, squinting at her computer monitor. Behind her, a picture of the LA hills ablaze. Apt, Sharon thinks. 

“Captain Raydor,” she says, her heavy accent making her title sound like a sugary breakfast cereal. 

“Chief Johnson,” Sharon offers. 

“Come in, have a seat,” the Chief says, waving to the one chair that isn’t covered in paperwork. The whole office is a disorganized mess. Sharon knows about Major Crimes, a little. They’re a highly successful, specialized division and Chief Johnson gets results, that’s what Sharon has heard. Apparently her razor sharp skills in catching murderers doesn’t include staying on top of paperwork. Sharon lowers herself into the chair and sets her bag on her lap.

Chief Johnson is so small, just a slip of a thing being dwarfed by her desk. Finally she looks up and says, “Well. Welcome to Major Crimes.”

“Thank you,” Sharon says softly.

“I know we don’t really know one another,” the Chief says. “But I pulled your jacket. You started in West Valley division?”

“I was a patrol officer for about fifteen minutes,” Sharon says dryly.

“Yes,” the Chief says glancing back at her screen. “What made you go to FID?”

Sharon forces herself not to sigh. “It’s in there, if you read it.”

“You shot someone,” the Chief says. Sharon isn’t fooled by this. No one is brought in to run a division like Major Crimes as a Deputy Chief from across the country only to turn out to be stupid. 

“It’s a little late for a job interview, Chief,” Sharon says. “Like it or not, I’m here.”

“It’s not a matter of likin’ it or not,” the Chief says. “I just don’t know you. I’m only tryin’ to get a feel for you. I can read your jacket and know you shot someone and then made the move to FID, but it certainly doesn’t tell me why.” 

Sharon doesn’t hold the sigh in this time, shifts in the uncomfortable chair. “I found the procedure that follows an officer involved shooting interesting, somewhat helpful, but largely lacking.” 

“And you thought you could fix it?” Chief Johnson asks. Sharon doesn’t answer this. Chief Johnson knows that any change is going to come from the inside. 

Instead she says, “It was a good way to achieve rank, quickly. I had a family to raise.”

“Okay, well,” the Chief says. “I know it’s going to be an adjustment. For you, for all of us. I have no doubt that your skill set will become invaluable to us quickly. I’m gonna turn you over to David for now. We wrapped up our cases, so it’s a good day for you to start.” 

If there was some signal through the half open blinds of her office, Sharon missed it, yet Sergeant Gabriel appears a moment later. Chief Johnson clearly has a strong bond with her team. They work for her, that much is clear. Sharon remembers her rocky start, but whatever she’d done to earn their loyalty must have happened fast for her to have an imperceptible, silent short hand with them. 

“Thank you, Chief,” Sharon says, because she has manners. She gathers her things and follows Gabriel out into the bullpen. 

“First of all, welcome to Major Crimes, Captain,” he says. “Your desk is right here. Elliot brought a box down for you so it's all here for you.” 

There is a cardboard box on a desk, pushed up against another desk. It’s hard not to flinch. She’s had her own office for a very long time. She keeps reminding herself that she should be grateful to still have a job, but she is finding she cannot be grateful for a system that was allowed to screw her so royally. Her union rep had chewed her out for submitting the transfer without talking to him. It had undermined their ability to file a grievance, but she doesn’t want to live in limbo for months while they drag out a fight through meet and confers and arbitrations that ultimately go nowhere. She just needs to accept how things are and move on.

“Thank you,” she says, setting her bag down and finally sliding off her coat. 

“Not what you’re used to, probably,” he says. He must realize that she doesn’t really want to talk about it, because he turns and says, “You all know Captain Raydor?”

“You know we do,” Provenza grumbles. Flynn says nothing, head down at his desk. 

Tao offers a weak, “Hi Captain,” which is something, she supposes. 

“I’ll introduce you to Buzz,” Gabriel says. So she follows him, intent on wasting the morning away on this depressing tour. 

oooo

They roll out on her second day, and it is a gruesome one. She rides with Sargeant Gabriel, holding on hard to the plastic grip in the door as he speeds through the neighborhood. Despite everything, however, she is looking forward to seeing a case from start to finish. She doesn’t imagine anyone will let her do more than observe at the start. While she’s run her own investigations, seen her share of bodies in the streets of Los Angeles, this is different. Major Crimes is different and everyone knows it. 

It’s nearly the entire Rivera family that is lying dead on their kitchen floor. Two kids, the wife, and the grandmother. Flynn makes a comment about how he suspects the father and the Chief demands that everything start over. Makes Buzz reset the tape in his camera and chews Flynn out right there in front of the rest of them. 

She doesn’t want any assumptions on the tape and Sharon thinks it’s smart of her, though she seems a little on edge. Maybe she just always is. 

Provenza shows up late with the Coroner on his tail and Sharon wonders if it’s always so chaotic. She catalogues details. The spilled candy bars, the lack of casings, the blanket over the faces. But anything she thinks might be important, someone else points out before she gets the chance. This division is on the top of their game and the Chief, despite her bouncy blonde ponytail and pastel pink trench coat, doesn’t tolerate mistakes. 

Chief Johnson sends out Flynn and Provenza to find the husband and bring him downtown. 

“What would you like me to do, Chief?” Sharon asks, trying to be helpful.

Chief Johnson looks at her, tucked in the corner of the crime scene and sighs, rubs her head for a moment and then turns her back on her. 

“Lieutenant Tao, please babysit the Captain,” she says, and walks out of the house, murmuring something to Detective Sanchez before she goes. 

It’s hard not to feel slighted, but she holds in her hurt. It’s not a secret that no one wants her here, herself included, but they all have to figure out a way to make it work. Chief Johnson’s way, apparently, is to make Sharon someone else’s problem. 

“She’s not…” Lieutenant Tao says, and then trails off, rethinking whatever it was that he was going to say. “Family cases are not the best for…”

“It’s fine,” Sharon says, and it is because it has to be. “I would like to be helpful, however.” 

“Yes, ma’am,” he says. “Buzz? Why don’t you let Captain Raydor shadow you so she knows our crime scene procedure.”

“Thank you,” she says, and means it. 

oooo

After hours spent at the crime scene cataloging, she’s exhausted but when they get into the car, Lieutenant Tao tells her that they’ve picked up Mr. Rivera and are supposed to meet everyone back at Parker Center.

“Do you people ever eat?” she asks, shifting in her seat. She’s tired and hungry and her hips are aching from these heels. She’s going to have to switch to flats for crime scenes. Slacks and something sensible and dowdy with some arch support. 

Tao chuckles. “We’ll order out when we get there.”

The interview with Mr. Rivera goes so badly. Sharon watches it on the monitor in horror. Here’s a man who has to be told his whole family is dead and the Chief does so with all the finesse of a freight train. She bullies him, she tries to trap him into confessing a crime he seems not even to know about. She does it with a reporter from the LA Times watching. 

“Who is this?” the reporter, Ramos, had asked when he saw her.

“Don’t worry about her,” Commander Taylor had replied. 

“Captain Sharon Raydor,” she’d said, anyway. 

“Are you observing today, too?” he’d asked. 

“Captain Raydor is the newest member of Major Crimes,” Taylor had said, though he hadn’t looked happy about it.

“Really?” Ramon had said, scribbling down something on his notepad. “So that makes a Deputy Chief, a Captain, three Lieutenants, a Sergeant, and a Detective?”

“Uh, yeah,” Taylor had said. 

“What’s that payroll like?” he mused. No one had answered that.

And now they watch this, the Chief telling a man that his family has been murdered and him reacting so badly that he throws up into the wastepaper bin. 

“This isn’t working,” Provenza mutters angrily. Everything about Provenza has been livid since she joined them. They’ve never been friends, but she’s known him for a long time and this seems like an overreaction, even for him. 

“He’s never going to talk here,” Flynn agrees. 

“A more familiar setting, maybe?” Tao offers. “Something more comfortable?”

“We can’t take him home, it’s still an active scene,” Gabriel says. 

“More neutral, then,” Sharon offers softly. Everyone turns to look at her, but no one tells her to shut up, so she finishes her thought. “Like a motel, or something.”

“LAPD keeps a couple of rooms at the DoubleTree,” Taylor offers. “I’ll call up and see if they’re free.” 

“Thank you, Commander,” Gabriel says. “That could work.”

“Buzz,” Provenza barks. “Pack it up.” 

Taylor claps Ramos on the shoulder and says, “Look at that interdepartmental cooperation.”

“Wow,” Ramos deadpans but writes nothing down.

oooo

By the time they all schlep down to the DoubleTree, they’ve all tipped into overtime. It’s not her job to worry about it anymore, _obviously_ , but it’s a difficult part of her brain to turn off. Ramos had been right to point out the unusual makeup of the squad. 

They watch Buzz set up everything in the side room. She tucks herself into a chair and stays out of the way. She’s contributed more today than she thought they would allow at all, so that’s something. When Detective Sanchez and the Chief show up with Mr. Rivera, they can all see that he’s in no state to be interrogated, though that doesn’t stop the Chief from trying. She’s just steeling herself to have to stay here all night, aching and out of place, when the Chief comes over from the next room to talk to them.

She does a double take when she sees Sharon and Sharon knows that she’d been forgotten about again. 

“Why don’t you go on home, Captain,” she says. “Gonna be a long night. You can start fresh tomorrow.” 

It’s what she wants, but it feels like rejection all the same. Still. She stands.

“Of course, Chief,” she says. 

“I’ll drive you back, Captain,” Tao says. 

As they’re walking down the hall, she can hear Provenza grumble, “Why does she get to go? I’m old too, you know!”

“Because we can’t afford her, Lieutenant,” the Chief replies. 

Tao says nothing, so she pretends along with him. 

oooo

Ricky calls about an hour after she gets home, even though it’s awfully late. She’s sitting at her dining table, pushing food around on her plate, thinking about the dead family, stepping carefully over the pools of blood, the chocolate bars, the innards of the pillow used to silence the gun. About the father’s grief, how it seemed so real to her and how everyone else had looked at it with a vicious level of suspicion. 

She almost doesn’t answer the phone, because she just feels so disconnected from her own life but then, that isn’t her son’s fault and he could be having some sort of emergency. So she answers it. 

“Hi, mom,” he says, calm as ever. “Emily says you got a new job?”

Ricky isn’t the best at calling. Personality wise, he’s more like his father, though he’s not much of a drinker. He’d grown up watching his father slosh in and out of his life, after all. But Ricky is handsome and knows it, likes a good shortcut, it’s mostly concerned with himself. Just like Jackson. 

“I did,” she says, trying to sound cheerful. “I transferred to a… a different unit.” 

“Why?” he asks. “What happened?”

“It’s hard to explain,” she says. “It doesn’t matter. It’s just a different type of work.” She stabs a piece of broccoli and it falls right off the fork again. The first time she’d cooked it, it had been perfect. But now, reheated in the microwave, it’s gone over soft. 

“Are you okay?” he asks. “Do you want me to drive down?”

“I always want to see you, bud,” she says honestly. “But you don’t need to feel like you have to come all the way down here. I’m fine and it’s a busy time because of the transition.” 

“Okay,” he says, though he sounds unconvinced. “Emily said you cried.”

“I’m fine,” she says again. “You can tell Emily that I’m fine.” 

She’s too tired for a long call, anyway. It has just crept past ten o’clock, but Ricky is a night owl and knows that his mother will ignore any call she doesn’t want to take. He was probably hoping to get her voicemail anyhow. 

Major Crimes works tough hours and she’s going to have to adjust fast. She’s somewhat used to odd rollouts and deadlines, but she got it in short bursts in FID - 72 hours of intensity and then she’d settle back down again. She can already tell that Major Crimes is used to moving at an alarming pace. Up all hours, always on call. 

She begs off a longer conversation, telling him that she’s tired and that they can catch up on the weekend, maybe. She knows he won’t call back, feeling his duty of checking up on his mother to be discharged. But as soon as she hangs up, it’s not three minutes that the phone rings again, a number she doesn’t recognize.

Still, she answers it. 

“Captain, it’s Sergeant Gabriel,” he says. “The Chief wanted me to let you know it’s an early call tomorrow.” 

“Early,” she says. Their official start time is nine am. “What does that mean, exactly?”

“A case like this?” he says. “A whole family? Kids? She’ll go straight from the hotel back to the office.”

“Your overtime must be outrageous,” Sharon says, unable to tamp it down this time. 

“She keeps us out of that part, mostly. Anyway. See you bright and early, Captain,” Gabriel says.

“Goodnight,” she agrees. 

Gets up to set her alarm for 4:30am before she forgets. 

oooo

It’s only just light when she drives in and parks. Parker Center feels deserted. Still, when she makes it to Major Crimes, Sanchez is already there.

“Couldn’t sleep,” he says and points to a tired old coffee pot on a table near the whiteboard.

“Did she set you free from the hotel as well, Detective?” Sharon asks.

“Eventually,” Sanchez says. 

Gabriel shows up next, then Tao, then Flynn.

When Provenza and the Chief finally return, it’s midmorning and the Chief comes in manic.

“I went home to change,” she says to no one in particular. “Showered, watched the tape again of the inmate visit.”

“Did you sleep?” Sharon asks, but Provenza makes a sound low in his throat to get her attention and then shakes his head at her. The Chief doesn’t answer anyway. Just disappears into her office. It’s a rather abrupt departure for someone who seems to be in the middle of a revelation but then her blinds snap open and she waves them all closer.

“Oh boy, I hate when she’s like this,” Provenza mutters. 

The Chief leans close to the glass and breathes, fogging it up. Then, perfectly writes _Got ‘em_ in the fog. It’s a little impressive since writing backwards is not a skill Sharon would boast of, but it’s still a little dramatic. 

Gabriel sighs and says loudly, “I’ll call down and see when their next visitation is.”

“Thank you,” Chief Johnson calls back through the glass.

“Who is going to go in there and tell her to go home and get some sleep?” Provenza asks. 

“I did it last time,” Flynn says. 

“I’ll go,” Tao says. 

“How much time do you spend solving crimes and how much time do you spend handling her?” Sharon asks Gabriel.

“Solving crimes is handling her,” he mutters, picking up the handset of his phone.

“Hmm,” she says.

oooo

There is a strange high, a rush to solving a murder like this. Figuring out who shot and killed a family, two children, a mother, a grandmother, well, it doesn’t bring them back again, but there is satisfaction in locking away a murderer. There is justice. 

Once again, Chief Johnson is ruthless in her quest to catch the killer, to trap them in their own lies, to have the truth come tumbling out at everyone’s feet. Sharon thinks there has to be a better way, a kinder way, and even says as much to Tao who looks surprised and says, “Do you think murderers deserve kindness?”

She thinks everyone deserves kindness, but she sees his point. 

“Not everyone turns out to be a murderer,” she says instead. 

He nods thoughtfully. “You get one chance, usually,” he replies. “One shot at figuring out whether someone is guilty or innocent based on a first impression. Chief Johnson doesn’t like to waste her chance.” 

So she thinks about that on her drive home. About how a woman like Brenda Leigh Johnson got to where she is today, about what she had to do to get there. Sharon can’t tell if she even likes Chief Johnson. She respects her, respects her as an officer of the law, respects the results she gets and the prestige she brings to the LAPD, respects how she protected Sharon without even knowing her, but she’s just not sure she likes her. Maybe she’ll grow to like her in time. The rest of the squad seems to be fiercely loyal, willing to put up with the bad for the sake of the good. 

Her condo is quiet, lit only by the lamp on the table that she’d left on for herself. She feels overwhelmed the moment she gets home by what she ought to do with the time she has. Make dinner, do laundry, change her bedding. There’s something ominous about always being on call. They’d solved this murder but the next one could drop at any moment. Her phone could ring, it could be relentless, a constant stream of death and sorrow.

She’d read up on the charter of the division. What constitutes a Major Crime - a celebrity, a certain amount of wealth. The number of dead bodies, or the age of the victim. The Riveras had tripped into Major Crime territory twice over with four bodies and two of them being minors. She’s frankly surprised that, while in FID, she hadn’t crossed paths with them yet. 

She settles on turning on the oven to warm through a frozen casserole in her freezer. She likes to spend a free day every couple of weeks cooking and then freeze it all for nights like this when she comes home exhausted. But warming up a frozen dinner feels like all she can handle. She’ll leave the laundry. She’ll sleep on dirty sheets for one more night. 

She turns on the news and uncorks a bottle of white wine, pours herself half a glass and then re-corks it, shoving it into the door of her refrigerator. 

Her phone blips in her purse with a text and it’s Emily again, checking up on her, asking if she wants a phone call. She texts back that she’ll call on the weekend, which seems to satisfy her daughter well enough for now. 

Later, in bed, face washed and lights out, she can’t stop thinking about the Rivera family. About the dead little girl with a doll in her arms, the television on loud, the afternoon sun filtering through the windows.

Of Mr. Rivera being sick into the trash can.

Of Deputy Chief Brenda Leigh Johnson yanking open her blinds, parting her lips, and breathing out hot against the glass.


	3. but let's call a spade a spade

_Here we go again, it's obvious_   
_Here we go again, the two of us_   
_We've just become our worst mistakes_   
_The rattles of two rattlesnakes_   
_The antidote that no one takes_

**Simple Fix - Aimee Mann**

*

Kitty dies and she calls her mama to pass on the sad news. She expects sympathy and compassion but gets her mama saying, “Well, cats don’t live forever, Brenda Leigh. How old was she anyway?”

“I dunno, mama, he came with the house,” Brenda says. She’s sitting on the couch, all ready for work but she’d stopped abruptly, feeling compelled to talk to her mother. 

“Well, honey,” her mama says. “How’s Fritz?”

Brenda gets a sinking feeling in her stomach whenever she catches sight of her wedding band, snuggled up tight against the engagement ring she’d only just gotten used to. It’s an unsettling sensation, one she doesn’t quite yet understand. The wedding had been small, but nice. She’d even enjoyed the honeymoon. Italy had been beautiful, hot and sunny and otherworldly. 

Fritz had been insistent that she unplug from work and she’d really made an effort to do so. She’d thought about work practically the whole trip but had, at the very least, kept her fretting to herself. 

They’d passed the time playing tourist during the day and with food and sex at night. Sex has never been their problem. She’s not even really sure what their problem is or if they even have one. It’s only now that now, back in Los Angeles, something feels unsettled. Always tense. Fritz is definitely back to his short-tempered normal - a temper that spikes hot whenever she’s in the middle of a case. 

So, then, often.

“He’s fine,” she tells her mother. The conversation doesn’t last long after that.

By the time she finishes the Rivera case, the tension with her husband is nearly unbearable. He seems to hate when her work unintentionally crosses an FBI operation, but it’s not like she does that on purpose. She’d thought maybe the wedding might mellow Fritz out, his moody jealousy that her job is the third person in their relationship. But everything feels the same now, or worse, and when she sees her wedding band she feels slightly trapped. A little panicky, like an animal without an escape route. 

It _has_ been a hard case; ugly and pointless deaths and those are always a drain. She’d been worried, too, about butting heads with Sharon Raydor or embarrassing herself in front of the refined Captain, but Captain Raydor had been willing, though distant and somewhat cold. She’d easily managed stepping into Irene Daniels’ wheelhouse of combing through financials but hadn’t attempted to overdo it, or try to show off. She didn’t seem to be interested in a show of power or flashing her rank. She’d been quiet and observant and willing to learn. That had been a relief, at least, despite her general ice queen demeanor. Provenza had mentioned that Raydor had always been this way and to not take it personally.

Brenda goes into work at 9:30, free of the frenzy of an active case. Most of her day today will be paperwork and finalizing details so they can box everything up and hand it all over to the District Attorney.

When she arrives at the bullpen, Captain Raydor is already at her desk, coiffed and made up. Tailored clothes, a practical pair of black pumps with a higher heel than Brenda cares to endure. Raydor is peering at her computer screen but clicks away to the desktop when she notices Brenda come in. 

“Chief,” she says. “A moment?”

“Come on, then,” she says, allowing Raydor to trail her into her office. She even holds the door open for her, watching her heels click clack against the tired linoleum. Then she drops her things onto her desk and opens the top drawer for a piece of chocolate. She’s trying not to eat candy at home where Fritz can see her because he’s such a nag about it, so by the time she gets to the office, she’s desperate.

“I think I have a solution to our problem,” Raydor says, watching Brenda’s fingers unwrap her piece of chocolate. Perhaps Brenda ought to wait until she’s alone to indulge but some things just can’t wait. Like chocolate melting onto her tongue. 

“What problem?” she says when the sweetness has dissolved away enough to speak. 

“The problem of affording me,” Raydor says. “I overheard your comment to Lieutenant Provenza.”

“I didn’t mean for that to be a value judgement on you, Captain,” Brenda says. She’s not used to someone being so observant, she works mostly with men. 

“I know, it’s fine, I understand,” Raydor says. 

Brenda nods for her to continue. 

“You… rather, we chew through overtime at an alarming rate,” Raydor points out. “I have some ideas about that. And it seems to me that your ability to, um, shine regarding closing your cases is somewhat hampered by the bureaucracy of this job.” 

It takes Brenda a moment to parse that out. “You mean the paperwork?” 

Raydor nods. “If I may echo your earlier sentiment, this isn’t meant to be a value judgement, but your files are a mess. Your cases lag to the courtroom because you’re backed up on paperwork. Half your squad is overdue for evaluations. If you reworked your budget, you could probably get approved for more, but my sense is that you never look at it. Just submit it the same every year and hope for the best.”

Brenda sighs, a sharp pain starting behind her left eye. “All right, what is your point, Captain?”

“My point is that I don’t have a lot of experience as a Detective, but I am good at the things you hate. You need someone to take that off your plate so you can do what you do best, which is solve murders and get confessions. So you can do it without worrying about the details.” Raydor smiles, which is surprising. Her whole face changes. “And at my rank, I could do it without much fuss.”

Brenda is not used to offers of help. She’s used to fighting to get anything, having to tirelessly win people over to her side of things again and again. 

“You want to do my paperwork?” Brenda asks.

“I could absorb the administrative duties, you could solve the crimes,” Raydor says. “Then perhaps we could feel less guilty about my price tag.”

Brenda waves her hand as if to try to get her last comment out of the air. “I really wish… that really wasn’t supposed to be the implication.”

“No, but it is the reality,” Raydor says. “Just think about it, Chief.”

“I will, Captain,” Brenda says. 

It’s a tempting offer and not a bad one, but she wonders if agreeing would be a concession she can’t afford. If giving in this one area would set up the expectation of compromise elsewhere. 

Captain Raydor excuses herself and Brenda resumes her morning routine of turning on her computer, digging her phone out of her bag, hanging her coat. Another piece of chocolate for good measure.

oooo

Brenda has been mostly ignoring David Gabriel’s personal life to the best of her ability. She can see that he’s not yet back to himself, but breakups are hard and she keeps telling herself that if she gives him some space, he’ll work it out for himself. That it’s not her responsibility to step in because she’s not his mother, after all.

But when she gets the call that he’s been involved in a shooting, she realizes that she’s been looking past something she’d hoped would just mend itself because she didn’t want to deal with it. 

“I have to wait for FID,” he says on the phone. “But Taylor is saying get in the ambulance with the victim.” 

She usually lets one of her Lieutenants phone tree the roll outs, but she calls Captain Raydor herself.

“Chief,” she answers. “What can I do for you?”

“We have an officer involved shooting,” she says. “And it’s one of us.”

“Who?” she asks. “Are they okay?”

“David and he’s fine,” Brenda replies. “Who is running FID now?”

She can hear the Captain sigh. “Commander Winnie Davis.” 

“I don’t know her,” Brenda says. 

“I know,” Raydor says, like that’s the most obvious thing in the world. “Listen, anyone willing to step into that role knowing what Chief Pope did to me is not going to… Where is Sergeant Gabriel now.” 

“Uh,” Brenda says. “South Grand and 9th street.”

Raydor is quiet for a moment and then, “That’s a bar.”

It’s not a question. She already knows.

“Yes,” Brenda says. “I need time, Captain, I need to buy us some time to figure out what we’re up against. You know FID better than anyone. What should we do.”

“Chief, we can’t interfere with-”

“I don’t want to interfere, I just want a fair shot at figuring out what happened,” Brenda says.

“But-”

“Captain, listen to me. You are not FID anymore. You’re one of us. _Be_ one of us right now and listen to me. How can I buy us some time? Commander Taylor wants him to ride with the victim.”

Raydor sucks in air through her teeth like Brenda had just pinched her hard. “Okay,” she says. “Protocol is Cedars, but where he is, it’s not the closest. Tell them to go to St. Catherine’s instead. Let FID think it’s Cedars. That’ll give us half an hour, maybe.” 

“Thank you,” she says. It’s clear that Raydor doesn’t approve but Brenda gives her points for stepping up when asked. 

“See you soon, Chief,” Raydor replies and hangs up. 

Captain Raydor shows up to St. Catherine’s Medical Center in a navy trench coat, collar popped up against the chill in the night air. Her usually styled hair is stick straight, bangs pinned up and back. Brenda is already there, but she beats Raydor by five minutes, maybe, so they haven’t gotten much past what happened. David says it all again. 

“I heard shots, I came out of the bar, I saw the newspaper vendor dead, I identified myself as an LAPD office, the guy shot at me and I returned fire,” he says. 

“Okay, your lawyer should be here any minute,” Brenda says. “Don’t say anything else.”

“Ma’am, I don’t know-”

“She’s right,” Raydor says. “But listen to me very carefully, Sergeant. It is important, no imperative, that you cooperate fully with their investigation.”

“Wait am I cooperating or am I getting a lawyer?” he asks, confused.

“Both,” Raydor says. “The two are not mutually exclusive. You cooperate and you protect yourself.” 

“Chief,” Tao says, keeping watch at the door. “They’re coming.”

“Submit to the breathalyzer,” Raydor says quickly and quietly. “But you wait for your counsel to answer any questions.” 

“But Captain, Chief, I’ve been… I had a few drinks.”

“I know,” Brenda says, glancing at Raydor. “But we’re out of our depth here. Trusting Captain Raydor is our best bet.”

Winne Davis is an imposing woman, showing up in a full uniform in the middle of the night. No makeup, hair slicked back. 

“We were told Cedars,” she barks at the room, seemingly to no one in particular. 

“Yet here we are at St. Catherine’s,” Brenda says. “We haven’t met, I’m Deputy Chief Brenda Leigh Johnson.” She extends her hand.

Davis looks at it, sneers down her nose at it. “It’s a serious offense to interfere with this federally mandated investigation.” 

“A mix up is not an interference, Commander,” Brenda says, all friendliness draining from her voice, phony as it was. She lowers her hand, fingers curling up, nails digging into her own palm.

Davis spots the Captain and her eyes narrow. “I know you understand the importance of the work, Captain. I know I can count on you to not degrade it with a runaround.”

“Commander, I can assure you-”

“Elliot,” Davis says, cutting her off. “Check the Sergeant's blood alcohol level, please.”

“Sure,” David says. “I’m happy to comply.”

Davis turns back to Brenda, looks her up and down. “You already violated protocol when you let your Sergeant leave the scene.”

“Sergeant Gabriel had been shot at and in that instance, it’s perfectly acceptable to allow medical-” Raydor starts.

“Captain, I’m not looking for your input,” Davis says, not taking her eyes off Brenda. 

“She knows the job better than you,” Brenda says cooly. “You might welcome the input, Commander Davis.” 

“We’ll be taking Sergeant Gabriel from here,” Davis says. 

“Chief,” Brenda replies. 

“Excuse me?” Davis says. 

“When you address a higher ranked officer, it’s customary to include that rank, Commander Davis. You will address me as Deputy Chief, Chief Johnson, or ma’am, do I make myself clear?” 

Davis shakes her head, like this is all a colossal waste of time. “Of course, Chief.” Like she’s spitting nails. 

“Now, Sergeant Gabriel will cooperate with your investigation when his counsel is here to assist him.” Brenda narrows her eyes. “That’s an order, Commander.”

When she looks at Raydor, the Captain’s face is as cool and neutral as it always is. At least this time, she has the Captain on side. 

oooo

“I’m not sure pulling rank with her is going to do us any favors long term,” Raydor says when Brenda is about to get into her car. 

“Too late, I did it,” Brenda says, tired now. They’d worked a full day and are now out again, mired down in this mess David caused by feeling sorry for himself for the millionth day straight. “I just… hate a bully.”

Raydor laughs, a low bark but then clears her throat and says, “Winnie Davis is on a crash course to the top in terms of achieving rank. She will do whatever it takes to get there, I suspect. And Chief Pope isn’t happy with Major Crimes right now. With you or with me. If Davis thinks she can earn brownie points with him by bringing us to heel, she’ll try it.” 

“We’ll be careful,” Brenda agrees. “At least we have you and your encyclopedic knowledge of FID, Captain.”

“Hmm,” Raydor says. “You do.”

“I wonder if you’d walked in, instead of Commander Davis, this might have all gone a lot smoother,” Brenda says. Raydor doesn’t say anything. “You need a ride back to the scene?”

“No, I’ll meet you there,” Raydor says. When Brenda gets in and buckled, Raydor closes her car door for her and taps twice on the hood of the car before walking away. 

Fritz calls her as the sun is coming up, wondering if she’s ever coming home.

“We’re almost done,” she says into the phone. 

“Then let someone else wrap it up and come home,” he says. “You have a Captain now. She can babysit your scene.”

“This isn’t a scene I care to pass off,” Brenda says. “Not when it’s David on the line.”

Fritz sighs audibly. “Okay, well, I probably won’t see you until this evening then.” 

Brenda tucks the phone against her ear and looks over her shoulder at the command post, where Captain Raydor is talking to most of the squad. It’s been a little rocky, folding her in, but as bad as this situation is, she knows they’re lucky to have her in the moment and the rest of the squad does too. They’ve been following her orders to the letter. She even heard Provenza say, “Yes, ma’am,” which is nothing short of a miracle. 

“Okay, honey,” she says. 

When she puts the phone away, tucking it into the pocket of her trench coat, the rising sun catches the light on her diamond ring and she feels that internal panic again.

“Chief!” Flynn says. 

They’d had to fight to get control of the scene at all, sharing it with FID, arguing about it in Will’s office. She’s not used to not immediately getting her way with him, but he ultimately sided with her and that’s a relief at least. He may be mad at her specifically, but Major Crimes is still the gem in his crown and he’s not ready to throw that away yet. 

Still, as the investigation progresses, the more she gets Will back on her side by proving that the death of the newspaper vendor and David’s shooting are in fact connected, the more it seems to push Captain Raydor away. Raydor constantly questions her methods in regards to handling Commander Davis, is appalled at the way Brenda gets into the victim’s hospital room the first time and even calls getting his confession the second time “wildly unethical.” 

“While I certainly value your professional opinion, Captain,” Brenda says, working hard not to sneer as she says it, “The fact of the matter is, Major Crimes is successful because of the way we operate. Because of how _I_ operate and if you can’t figure out how to recalibrate to work with us, we’re gonna have bigger problems than your ethical misgivings.” 

“Of course, Chief,” she says. She doesn’t seem like she means it, but she clearly doesn’t want to have a fight about it. “All I can do is raise my objections.”

Brenda sits down hard in her desk chair, her fingers twitching to open her top drawer. But she waits, at least, for Raydor to leave before she yanks it open and reaches in blind, pulling out the first thing she can wrap her fingers around.

oooo

Brenda gets home to Kitty’s things all in a box and it hurts like a toothache, like a broken bone slow to mend. 

“What’s the rush?” she asks. “Why do you need… why would you pack all this up already?”

“The vet said I can donate Kitty’s stuff when I go pick up her ashes,” Fritz says. 

“You just wanna get rid of his stuff?” Brenda frets.

“Her stuff,” Fritz corrects, tiredly. “And there may be some cats who can use it.” He stares at her and says, “We can keep it if you want. In case we get another cat?”

“No, no, no,” she says. “No, no. I ain’t ready for all that. No, you’re right.”

She finally sets her purse down, slips off her coat and drapes it over the back of the couch and then kicks off her shoes, bending to pick them up and carry them to the closet. She just wants to get out of these work clothes and into something comfortable. 

“You finish your case?” Fritz calls. “Did you get Gabriel off the hook?”

She looks over her shoulder to see him hanging her coat in the closet. 

“We finished,” she says, dropping her shoes on the closet floor and taking off her outfit, dropping it in the dry cleaning hamper. “I didn’t have to get him off the hook, he didn’t do anything wrong.”

“I thought he shot that kid?” Fritz yells. 

“That kid was an accomplice to murder,” Brenda says, but she doesn’t feel like shouting, so she’s not sure he hears. 

She puts on a pair of pajama pants and a sweatshirt. It’s been chilly at night and Fritz almost never turns the heater up past 66 degrees. He doesn’t like to sleep hot, but she gets cold easily.

She finds him in the kitchen, looking at take out menus.

“You wanna order out?” she asks.

“I don’t feel like cooking,” he says.

“Okay,” she agrees. “Whatever you want is fine.”

She should do some laundry, she should clean up the vanity in her bathroom where her makeup is all jumbled up in the drawer and spread out across the counter, but she just drops into a chair at the kitchen table. She should ask about his case but honestly she doesn’t know anything about it. If he’s working one at all. So she just says, “How was work?”

“Fine,” he mumbles. “How about Korean barbecue?”

“Sure,” she says. It’s not what she wants, really, or would pick, but it’s not worth the fight. He hates when she says he can choose and then shoots down his choice. It’s just that sometimes she doesn’t know what she wants until it’s too late. 

oooo

Raydor suggests that they sit at the little table in her office instead of facing each other across the desk. She’s got an arm full of paper and when they sit and she spreads it out before them, she sees it’s the union Memoranda of Understandings for the two unions that make up her squad. 

“Gonna be one of those meetings, I see,” Brenda says and she doesn’t mean for it to sound combative, she’s actually trying to lighten the mood a little, but that never seems to work with Captain Raydor. She just looks at Brenda and then clears her throat softly.

“I took the liberty of double checking the MOUs,” she says. “Right now the whole squad is on the straight 12 hour, 60 hour work week as a standard.”

“We work long hours,” Brenda says, feeling defensive already. She didn’t invent this squad, she got surprisingly little say into how it is structured. People were so mad about her hiring when she came out to California, she didn’t have the weight to throw around to change anything. 

“Yes,” Raydor says. “And while we have an active case, that makes sense. However, there are down days. Between cases, days when it’s mostly waiting. Their MOU allows for a flexible schedule. My suggestion would be to flex them on slow days. Bump to and 8, 9, even ten hour days, depending on what’s happening. It’s a little bit here and there, but it will add up.”

“Can we do that?” Brenda asks. 

“Well,” Raydor says. “It will trigger a meet-and-confer and ultimately Chief Pope would have to approve it and send it up to the Chief of Police, but I’m confident any cost saving efforts would have his support.”

“Uh huh, and what about those guys out there who are used to having 60 weeks plus overtime on their paychecks?” Brenda asks. 

Sharon takes a breath and smooths her hand over the piece of paper in front of her. She knows what it looks like when someone is trying not to snap at her. 

“Then they’ll be like every other detective on this force,” Raydor says evenly.

“Every other squad isn’t like Major Crimes,” Brenda says.

“No, they tend to have more cases and less resources,” Sharon shoots back. “If you want Chief Pope’s favoritism of this squad to last, you’re going to have to start currying some favor.”

It’s not that Brenda disagrees, but it’s hard to hear it. Truly, this job would be difficult enough if it was just solving murders. It’s the politics that kills her, the bureaucracy. 

“Fine,” she says, rubbing her forehead. “What about our MOU? What does it say.”

Raydor slips it out from under the other one. It’s much slimmer. 

“Just 28 days on, 10 off,” Raydor says. “Our overtime comes from a special bank of hours, so it’s less of a money saving tactic on our end.”

“I just don’t know how we’re going to tell them,” Brenda says, looking past her to the squad at their desks. “We just lost Irene. Your joining was… unorthodox. Will is always pissed at me. Now we’re going to shake it all up?”

“How about this,” Raydor says. “I’ll draw up the proposal for the changes. Numbers and everything. If you think it’s worth it, we’ll send it up to Pope. If you don’t, we’ll let it lie for awhile.” 

“Sure,” she says. “Yes. That will be fine, Captain. Thank you.”

She thinks it will, at least, buy her some time but of course Raydor has it by the end of the week. Probably had it mostly done before she even went into that preliminary meeting. So Brenda prints it out and takes it home with her for the weekend. 

She reads it twice before handing it to Fritz and letting him take a look.

“This makes a lot of sense,” he says, paging through it. “It gives you the potential of savings without restriction. Your squad could operate exactly how it has been, if needed.”

“I know,” Brenda says. “It’s… good work.” 

“So what’s the problem?” Fritz asks.

“It feels unfair. All the changes fall to the guys and not me and the Captain,” she says. 

“You two are in a different union,” Fritz says. “Sometimes that’s the way it goes. Management gets perks you don’t.”

“You think that’s fair?” Brenda demands.

“I think that’s life,” Fritz says. 

“I don’t think Raydor likes me,” Brenda admits. 

Fritz chuckles and then realizes she’s being serious. “Well, do you care about that?” 

“I think things will work a lot better if we can all get along. But she’s just always so cold and polite, even when she’s telling me my methods are unethical!” 

He laughs again, though it sounds half like a scoff, and says, “Maybe that’ll be good for you.”

He doesn’t understand and she’s not going to expend more energy trying to make him.

“Pork ribs?” he asks when she gets up to walk away.

“Sure,” she says. 

In the bathroom, she sweeps everything on the counter into the drawer and then starts arranging. Lipsticks with lipsticks, mascara, concealer, her dirty little wedge sponge. Her powder compact with the cracked hinge that never stays shut. 

When she looks up at her own reflection, she looks tired and twisted up. Dark circles under her eyes. 

She slams the drawer closed.


	4. broken clock still keeps the time

_I hate to say it, but I think I'm getting too old_  
_The conversations that my mind won’t even let me hold_  
_Your attention isn't worth my weight in fool's gold_  
_Wanna let go, can I let go?_

**Fool’s Gold - Briston Maroney**

*

There are slow times, as it turns out. They have a very dry week and Sharon documents that as well for her proposal to Chief Pope. Chief Johnson is so bored that she invents a case for them, digging out a missing person’s report and then tripping again into an active FBI case. 

Though she receives an introduction for Agent Howard, no one tells her that he’s the Chief’s husband. Sharon knows she’s married, and if she’d had to guess, she would say newly married by the way she worries that ring around her finger all day. But certainly no one does her the courtesy of mentioning the marriage to her.

She has to run into them in the back hallway, wedged between the bathrooms and the interview rooms, whispering furiously at one another. Sharon doesn’t interfere, just slips into the ladies’ room to take care of her business and think about what she’d just seen. When she comes back out again, they’re still there but less animated, whether for her benefit or because whatever heated conversation had concluded she isn’t sure. 

But she does see him lean in and kiss her cheek, which the Chief mostly endures, her spine straight and eyes staring out the window. 

“I’ll pick up Chinese,” he says, before turning the corner to head toward, presumably, the elevators. 

Sharon crosses her arms and leans back against the wall to take some of the weight off her hips and knees. She just cannot, however, bring herself to wear flats. It also gives Chief Johnson space to walk past her. And when she does, Sharon can see that her cheeks are flushed.

“Captain,” she mumbles.

Sharon realizes that she’s embarrassed to have been spotted. Sharon certainly doesn’t care about the Chief’s private life, and is impressed that in her line of work, she’s managed to have one at all. It is interesting, however. Sharon finds it _extremely_ interesting, as a matter of fact. It seems like every time Sharon decides that Chief Johnson is the most skilled and competent person she’s ever met, there’s another aspect she uncovers that shows perhaps she doesn’t quite have it all together, after all. 

And she likes uncovering these things. Now here is a case she could spend some time solving. Why had someone like Chief Johnson stuck out her neck to save someone like Sharon Raydor and what is it, exactly, that makes her tick, tick, tick?

oooo

Any goodwill that Sharon has fostered evaporates as if it had never existed at all. Provenza feels the new scheduling model is a personal attack, that she’s out to get him. And the rest of the squad follows his lead out of solidarity.

It doesn’t help anything that Chief Pope comes down to their floor to tell them about it, praising Sharon for her initiative in saving the department money. Praise wasn’t and isn’t her goal, obviously. Her motivation had been wholly guilt fueled. She felt bad that the Chief had to absorb her, she feels all the time like she can’t contribute to cases in a meaningful way. But she can help financially and administratively, or so she’d thought. 

She hopes that Chief Johnson will stand up for her, defend her even a small amount, but when Chief Pope leaves and the squad is left standing holding their schedule change memo in their hands, all that Chief Johnson says is, “Thank you, Captain. Good work.” 

She’d hoped for more than that. 

Chief Johnson then shuts herself into her office and Sharon is left to face them alone. 

“Well,” she says into the uneasy silence, to the wall of disgruntled faces.

“Why is it,” Provenza starts, “that when belts need to be tightened, it’s always the lower ranks that have to take the hit?”

“Always,” Flynn agrees. 

“If you look at the changes,” Sharon says, though it is work to force herself to sound calm, to make sure her voice doesn’t shake. “You’ll see that I went from 12 hour days to eight. I took the largest cut. I am the least likely to use overtime.” 

“That’s true,” Gabriel says, throwing her a bone. Flynn sneers at him and he drops his head, stares at his shoes.

“If we’re busy case wise, it will be a barely noticeable difference,” Sharon says.

“Oh, I’ll notice,” Flynn grumbles. “And besides, I don’t see you holding a memo. I suppose you can just opt in and out at will?” He’s not wrong, but she’s not the type of person to stay an extra four hours doing nothing just to line her own pockets. She thought they would be able to see that. 

“Obviously you are all unhappy,” Sharon says, though she says it to Provenza. “Obviously, this is not ideal.”

“Obviously,” he says, drawing the word out with drenched sarcasm.

“However, I have looked extensively into the budget of this department and it became immediately clear that Major Crimes was past due for a financial overhaul. Believe me, Lieutenant, that it is better for that to come from inside the department and not above it.” She glances at Tao who is most likely to support what she’s saying or at least stay neutral but he says nothing and won’t look at her.

“And you consider yourself to be an insider, do you?” Provenza says and then scoffs and sits down hard in his chair simply so he can spin to have his back to her. She doesn’t know why she’s standing here trying to defend herself to them. It’s not necessary. The only people she had needed to convince, she’s convinced so she doesn’t reply, sits at her desk, doesn’t go off to hide somewhere and lick her wounds.

She has wine at home, she’s a grown up, she can wait. 

oooo

She thinks about calling out the following Tuesday. Lies in bed and listens to the wind whistle by her bedroom window. The window is closed but it must not be latched because she usually can’t hear anything out of these windows when they’re closed correctly. 

She’d survived Thursday and Friday of last week, with Provenza being openly hostile and the rest of the squad freezing her out. Chief Johnson simply averting her eyes whenever Sharon glanced at her for help or something of a respite. Where was her feminist solidarity now? Where was the Chief Johnson who’d so deftly maneuvered her away from a shameful termination before Chief Pope had even managed to eat his breakfast?

Apparently she dissolved away when faced with the opinion of her favored men and all that was left was this tiny woman in a floral print, someone with no backbone, someone who just looked like… like a Brenda. 

She’d hoped that the weekend would thaw everyone and that on Monday they could just start fresh but it was only more of the same, Provenza almost manically lobbing insults at her like he’d been saving them up over the weekend and was now in danger of backing up. Chief Johnson had looked annoyed at him instead of pretending like she couldn’t hear it, though she let it stand, merely diverting everyone’s attention toward something else. Still without a case, they’d spent Monday with Buzz walking them through his more technical new grant-funded purchases. 

Sharon left after her eight hours starting to feel desperate for a case or a natural disaster. Maybe a prison break, something that forced them into one unifying cause. Where they had to leave Major Crimes behind to simply be LAPD officers. 

She chastised herself on the drive home for hoping for terrible things, found herself mumbling “deliver me and forgive me for my sins-” out of habit, halfway through the familiar prayer before even realizing she’d started it. 

And now, Tuesday. A little windy, but no earthquakes or wildfires on this dull November morning. And no roll out. She daydreams briefly about calling out, but won’t do it unless she really is sick and sick of bullshit doesn’t count. She throws back her blankets and gets up, sitting upright for just a pause to grasp for her glasses on the nightstand. The plastic frames are cold against the bridge of her nose and it’s the little injustices that build up throughout the day that really grate on her. An unlatched window, cold plastic against her skin, waiting extra long for the elevator as it lumbers up from the underground parking garage.

By the time she gets to the office, she’s in a mood bad enough that she just can’t hide it. She feels it blistering under her skin. Provenza’s hateful misogyny, the fact that Flynn’s sobriety doesn’t help his personality. Sergeant Gabriel’s proclivity of following Chief Johnson around like a puppy, desperate to be her right hand man. Tao’s lack of backbone. Julio Sanchez’s mile wide streak of violence, poorly hidden inside the frame of a quiet man. 

And Chief Johnson’s complete and utter inability to tell wrong from right. She’s happened to find herself on the right side of things but Sharon’s been here two months and has seen the Chief dance across that line more than once already. She’s going to become one of those detectives that loses her mind over an unsolved case and in a desperate attempt to catch her killer, kills them herself. She’s probably someone who has a whole room dedicated to it, pictures and evidence on the wall, string tying nonsense together like some sort of lunatic. 

She has this thought ferociously throughout the first hour of her morning, so then it’s a jarring coincidence when they roll out to find the body of Howard Greeson, a man suspected of killing two women back in the 90s. 

Flynn suggests contacting the detective on the case.

“Joey Olin,” Sharon says softly.

“Yeah,” Flynn says, the first non-cruel thing he’s said to her in days. “You remember that, Captain?”

She nods. It was before her move to Internal Affairs, anyway. She remembers hearing about it, about tucking Emily into bed that night and kissing her forehead, lingering for so long to breathe deeply the smell of her that she’d shifted and pushed her mother away. 

“Joey O was a great detective,” Flynn says. 

“He was a brown nosing boy scout,” Provenza mumbles but loud enough to be heard. 

“Well, let’s bring him in,” the Chief says, ignoring him. “Maybe he can help us fill in some gaps.”

Flynn pulls his phone out with a grin. “This is gonna make his day!” he says gleefully.

“Lieutenant,” Sharon snaps before she can stop herself. He looks up at her, in fact everyone turns to look at her. She clears her throat and says, “Is this man still not our victim?”

“He’s a murderer,” Provenza says.

“He might be,” Chief Johnson says. “But Captain Raydor is absolutely right. He’s first and foremost our victim.”

And their victim is in quite a state. Broken limbs, tied up like he’d been dragged. There’s not much discussion about that, it’s a consensus quickly. She’s getting better about looking into the dark eyes of death. She feels like the Rivera family was a trial by fire. If she could stand that case, she can stand anything, but this is by far the most gruesome crime scene she’s ever been to. She can see bone, can see his muscle looking like ground beef. As the day heats up, it starts to smell like that too, rotting meat left in the sun. She steps away to get some air and Sanchez comes over.

“You okay, Captain?” he asks. 

She scoffs softly. This does not deter him.

“Hard way to go,” he says. “Maybe he deserved it, though.” 

The coroner is here now, carefully packing their victim for transport to the morgue. 

“I hope it’s never up to me to decide that, Detective,” she says. 

“Captain,” Chief Johnson calls. “You’re with me, please!”

She’s happy enough to step away from his halfhearted attempt at reconciliation or whatever it is that he’s doing, if it is guilt that fueled him to come over to talk to her. She hasn’t known Julio Sanchez the longest of anyone in Major Crimes, but she may know him the best simply by the sheer volume of times he’d discharged his weapon and triggered an investigation. He’s not a bad man, but she wouldn’t call him good.

“I want to follow the body to the morgue,” Chief Johnson says, digging around in that bag of hers. “The guys are going to stay and finish up here. You can drive, right?”

“Sure,” she says. 

It’s a bit of a walk back to the car and then not a speedy drive to the Medical Examiner’s building. Chief Johnson spends the walk to the car mostly silent and the drive just verbally going over case details. Externally processing. Sharon lets her rattle on without interruption, but then Chief Johnson surprises her and says, “You drive like a local, are you from here, Captain?”

Sharon wasn’t born in Los Angeles, but she’s lived here for most of her life. “Yes,” she says. 

“It feels like the entire LAPD are born and bred Californians and yet this is supposed to be a city of transplants!” Chief Johnson says, sounding slightly frustrated. 

“I don’t think a great deal of failed actors turn to police work as a backup,” Sharon says. “You have to be a citizen, so that also wipes out a swath of potential applicants.” 

“Good points,” she agrees. “I've been here five years now, and it occurs to me I just never feel like I belong here.”

“Are you thinking of moving on?” Sharon asks.

“No,” Chief Johnson says. “No. I would like to stay in one place, for once.” 

It doesn’t feel like the Chief is opening up to her, no, she feels like she’s being baited into perhaps talking about herself. Like if the Chief shares something personal, Sharon might do the same in return. 

“Hmm,” is all she says. She doesn’t feel much like sharing after the Chief let the whole division freeze her out for a week. 

Chief Johnson seems to realize that her little tactic isn’t going to work, because she drops it, goes right back to the case and says, “What do you know about Joey Olin?”

“Flynn knew him better,” she replies.

“I’m asking what you know,” the Chief says pointedly.

Sharon sighs. “I know that his son was on the baseball team with my son when they were in the tenth grade,” she said. “I know he never showed up to the games because he was always working.” 

Chief Johnson makes an exasperated sigh and says, “Well that’s no help!”

“I think you’ll get to see for yourself soon enough, Chief,” Sharon says. “If something broke on the case that haunted you, wouldn’t you drop everything and come running?”

Chief Johnson looks right at her, all blonde curls and pink cheeks. “Yes, Captain, I would,” she says. 

oooo

Sharon knows there’s something wrong with Joey Olin the moment he saunters into the murder room. He just looks wrong. His clothes fit wrong, too loose, like a child playing dress up. She thinks about pointing this out to the Chief but she can see that Chief Johnson already sees it too, so she doesn’t bring it up. 

Everything about this case seems to rub the Chief the wrong way. Sharon has seen her be manic in the face of some big break, moody when things aren’t moving fast enough, she’s seen her play her cards close to her chest when trying to trap a suspect into saying something stupid or incriminating but this is the first time she’s seen Chief Johnson edgy and short-tempered. Not that Sharon minds her snapping at Flynn, who is such an enormous asshole that Sharon can hardly stand it. He reminds her of Jack, specifically when he was on a sobriety binge. Smug, always taunting her with it like he could stop whenever he wanted to. And he would stop for a couple weeks, for a month. 

And then he’d reward himself with a drink. 

Anyway, she doesn’t like thinking of Jack, and she knows he used to drink with Andy Flynn and so every time she looks at him, she’s irritated. 

Joey Olin has his own casefile, stuffed full and worn soft with use. Sharon watches him fill their murder board with his evidence, his pictures, his theories. She watches Chief Johnson watch him. 

“How’d you end up here, anyway?” Olin asks her while they’re waiting around for lab results. She didn’t think he remembered her, recognized her at all. He was a boy scout, in a way, like Provenza had said. He rarely got into any trouble, had perhaps had one perfunctory investigation with FID for discharging his firearm. She’d been very new to the department, back then. 

“Chief Johnson gets who she wants,” Sharon replies. “Usually murderers, but sometimes staff.”

She means it to sound mildly threatening. Just a tiny bit hostile. Sharon is fairly certain he’s hiding something, but she isn’t sure what. She knows the Chief feels the same because she’d welcomed him with open arms and has been pushing him away ever since, closing ranks around her case.

Olin chuckles and it turns into a cough. 

Chief Johnson tries to shut him out completely when Olin goes behind her back to inform the families of the murdered women about Gleeson before they even get the dental ID back. The Chief is obviously livid. They are all pretty sure it’s Gleeson, but Sharon’s worked enough cases with this division in the last two months to know that the center of gravity for any case that floats across Chief Johnson’s desk is control. She wants to know what’s going to happen before it happens, wants all the information before she asks a question. Like the truth is a jumbled up jigsaw puzzle and all she has to do is maneuver the pieces into the right order. 

By the time Sharon gets to the end of her work day, supposedly, no one shows any signs of going home. It feels disloyal to pack up and leave now, so she knocks on the closed glass office door and waits for the Chief to wave her in. She’s got the Gleeson file open on her desk, along with the cold case files and taped to her monitor, a mugshot of a dark haired man that Sharon doesn’t recognize. 

“Yes, Captain, what is it?” she asks. Sharon lets the door close fully behind her before she responds.

“No, Chief, what can I do for you?” she says stepping closer to the desk. Chief Johnson looks up in surprise and confusion. Glances at her wrist watch with its narrow band.

“I’m fine,” she says. “It’s after five.” 

“I’m not in a rush,” Sharon says, gesturing at the chair facing the desk. 

“Be my guest,” Chief Johnson says. 

“I know I’m not a seasoned detective,” Sharon says. “But I find sometimes it’s best to just talk things out. You can run it through with me, if you’d like.”

“Do I look that desperate?” the Chief says with a laugh and then waves her hand in front of her face. “No, sorry, that came out wrong.” She yanks her glasses off her face and shoves them to hang from her shirt. “It’s nothing against you.” 

“You look rattled,” Sharon says. She motions to the monitor. “Who is that?”

The Chief looks at the mugshot and then yanks it down, opening her top drawer and shoving it inside on top of the sea of foiled wrappers. 

“That ain’t pertinent to this case,” she says. 

“My son has a sweet tooth like yours,” Sharon says. “I could always tell when he was stressed out. I’d find little silver balls of foil everywhere. Those little paper tags from the kisses.” 

“They’re called plumes,” she says. “The little paper parts.” 

“Plumes,” Sharon repeats. “How quaint. Tell me something, Chief. If Olin hadn’t jumped the gun on notifying the families, what would you have done next?”

“If it turns out to be Howie Gleeson? I would have notified them myself.”

“Watched their reactions?” Sharon asks. 

Chief Johnson nods. 

“I’ve been watching this division for a couple months now,” Sharon says. “The way you function. The way you all tick. And do you know what I’ve noticed?”

“What’s that, Captain?” 

“I’ve noticed that every single case that I’ve observed was puzzled out by you,” she says. “Those guys out there are good at their jobs, I’m not saying they aren’t. But they work as an extension of you. In support of you and your talent. Your aptitude for this work. If you are out of sorts, Chief, I worry we’ll lose the thread of this one.”

She leans back in her chair and sighs, crossing her arms. “You don’t think I know that?”

“I just want to know how I can help you,” Sharon offers. She wonders at least once a day what she’s even doing here. Doing paperwork? Haunting crime scenes, but only if they fall within her office hours? Trying to piece together evidence from the white board and keep up with everyone who got to see it first hand?

Chief Johnson shakes her head. “I don’t know, Captain. Keep watching, I guess. I know you’re observant. Keep looking for the things they’re gonna miss,” she says gesturing to the guys out in the bullpen. “Or that I don’t see. I can’t be everywhere at once.” 

“Okay,” Sharon nods. “I can do that.”

“But for now, just go on home,” Chief Johnson says dismissively. “I’ll see you tomorrow.” 

It feels like some sort of walk of shame to emerge from the Chief’s office only to go to her desk and gather her things. She slips on her coat, knowing that everyone is watching her. 

“Good night, Captain,” Gabriel says.

“Yeah,” Provenza says. “Have a wonderful evening.” 

She can read that pretty clearly. Have fun going home while they toil away into the night. 

She doesn’t respond to either of them, simply walks out.

She sits in her car for a while in the parking garage, her purse and bag on the passenger seat next to her. She grips the while hard, staring at the concrete column in front of her. Her cell phone sits in the cup holder, dark and quiet. She’s not sure what she’s waiting for exactly. They won’t call her back in unless something enormous happens. Howard Gleeson comes back to life, perhaps. They could break the case in the night and they’d still just tell her about it in the morning. 

The fact that she’s contributing so little is just eating away at her. She’s a waste of resources. Maybe she should tell the Chief that she’d made a mistake. Maybe she should start looking for other places to transfer into, though pickings for her will be slim. Maybe she should talk to Chief Pope and they can work something out.

Her own dry chuckle into the silent cab of the car startles herself. Talking to Chief Pope would achieve nothing besides letting him know that there is unrest in Chief Johnson’s division and she’s not going to be the one to point that out to him. 

If it were just a couple years later, she could retire. So close she can brush her fingers against it if she reaches hard.

She starts the car, twists the knob to turn on her headlights. Puts on her seatbelt, glances up at the mirror to make sure there’s no one behind her. Puts the car into reverse and backs out slowly.

The condo is dark and cold when she gets home. She adjusts the thermostat, walks through turning on lamps. Her answering machine shows no messages. There’s clothes in the dryer so she turns it back on to fluff them up.

Changes into her pajamas even though it’s not even seven yet. She can heat up leftovers wearing anything, can’t she? And that’s what she does. Sticks a tupperware of rice pilaf into the microwave along with a small glass of water so the rice doesn’t come out hard. 

She sits in one of the armchairs to eat her dinner. She could turn on the television, but there’s nothing she feels like watching. She’s not good at keeping up with any show, so watching one mid-season episode and being vaguely confused the whole time isn’t relaxing. Instead, she watches the view, the long stretch of Los Feliz boulevard, ruby red with tail lights.

She doesn’t mind a solitary life. She really doesn’t. She’s fine being alone. She doesn’t miss Jackson, she doesn’t miss the type of marriage he gave her. She’s worked hard to be free of that stress, of that fear, of that debt. And she loves her children but wouldn’t want either of them to move in with her at their stage of life, no matter how nice the company might be on occasion. All that being said, she just hadn’t realized, as she made her way through adulthood, that by the end of her fifties, she’d be alone. She feels like she’s right on the precipice of something, about to start a new stage of life, but when she looks around, she can’t see what’s going to change, other than an apparently permanent dissatisfaction at work. Maybe, now that she’s working less, she might go back to mass now and then, if only for the social aspect. Take a yoga class or something. 

Her work has been her life for the last ten years. 

Like Chief Johnson. If she were single, her life might look more like Sharon’s. Working long hours, coming home to an empty place, eating food out of tupperware. It seems like that’s the life she wants, and everything else she has just doesn’t quite fit. The doting husband, the nosy parents, the wedding band that spins and spins. 

Chief Johnson wearing her faux-vintage suits and kitten heels. Her sweater sets and floral prints. Her dated lipstick but perfectly curled, golden hair. 

When she goes to sleep, finally, a little after ten, she falls into a dream where she can always hear ticking, is always looking for the source. A bomb or a clock or a timer. The noise drives her mad. The squad is there, she thinks, at least Sanchez and Tao and she tries to give them orders to help her look, but they don’t follow them. And then she notices Chief Johnson watching Sharon from her glass office, and she comes out and offers to help Sharon look, but the ticking gets so loud that she can barely hear what the Chief is saying. 

Sharon realizes, then, that the Chief is what’s ticking, the sound is coming from her, from inside of her somehow, and when Sharon tells her this, Chief Johnson smiles at her, but it’s insidious. Her mouth stretches out grotesquely wide and her eyes go so cold and then whatever is ticking inside of her goes off with a shrill sound.

Sharon wakes up and realizes the sound is her alarm clock. It’s morning again.

She swats at the alarm until it’s silenced and all she can hear is her own fast breathing. She tries to calm down, pushes the hair out of her face. Reaches for her glasses and slides them onto her face, grateful, today, for the cold plastic to help anchor her to this reality, to help trade away the memory of the dream in favor of consciousness.

She pushes off the covers, plants her feet on the carpet. Another gray November morning. Maybe today will be a better day, she thinks. Maybe today is an opportunity to figure out how to make what feels wrong feel right somehow. 

oooo

They’re watching Chief Johnson on the monitors as she interrogates the twin brother of one of the dead girls. Sharon is watching both the Chief on the screen, but also the back of Joey Olin, hunched over in the chair, pallid and with labored breathing. 

She sees the change in Chief Johnson. 

Leans into Julion Sanchez, who is standing next to her and says, “Did you see that?”

“See what?” he asks.

“The Chief,” Sharon says softly. “She changed. She knows who did it.” 

“She’s known for a while, I think,” Sanchez says. “But now she knows for sure.” He glances at his watch. “It'd be nice to get home early for once.” 

“Watching her work is really something else,” Sharon says.

“You get used to it,” Sanchez says. 

Maybe so, Sharon thinks, but she kind of hopes she doesn’t.


	5. and if we turn back time, could we learn to live right

_We broke everything that was right_  
_We both enjoyed a good fight_  
_And we sewed, all the holes we had to breathe_  
_To make the other one leave_

**Shiver - Lucy Rose**

*

When angry, Fritz hisses at her like a kettle about ready to boil. Today, it’s about her mother and about her niece, Charlene, coming in from Atlanta this afternoon. He’s already agreed to be the one to drive to LAX and fetch them so she doesn’t have to leave work, so she’s not exactly sure what harping on her about it as she tries to get out the door for the day is going to achieve. What is he looking for, exactly? She tries gratitude, thanking him but that doesn’t seem to do it. She tries to drum up some contrition but she’s running late so it’s not her best work.

“I just want you to care about your family as much as you care about your job,” he says as she has one foot out the door.

“I do,” she says. “I absolutely do.”

His unconvinced face is what she sees as she leaves the duplex, gets in her car, and drives away.

And she does care about them both, she just cares about them differently. She loves her parents, but it just doesn’t feel as consuming as the way she thinks about work. It happens in the background, that’s all, but it doesn’t mean it’s not as important, it’s just not as time sensitive. 

She thinks about Fritz’s sister as she sludges through traffic, about how he never talks to her on the phone, about how Brenda has only met her the one time for the wedding, about how she’d been with him a year before he even mentioned that he had a sister. So where does he get off, exactly, telling her that she needs to care about her family? She talks to her mother once a week on the phone, at least, and they’ve come to Los Angeles numerous times for visits. Fritz thinks because both his parents are dead, that he can be preachy about what she has, but he’s no better than she is. Not really. Not when everyohing is broken down to the nuts and bolts. 

They have to wrap a lot of loose ends up today because tomorrow they’re scheduled to appear at an allocution for a case that Major Crimes had handled while she’d been on her honeymoon in Italy, drinking wine in the sun and trying not to look at her phone.

She’s had the case in front of her all week and it seems incomplete and is certainly not the thorough job she’s used to, but Commander Taylor had been driving the squad in her absence and he’d gotten a confession early on. She plans on reading it again, today. She also has to do Tao’s evaluation. She is behind on those, she knows it, and Captain Raydor has been sending her little emails about it so they’re doing one today. They need to do this round together because Raydor can’t evaluate employees for a block of time she hadn’t even been working with them, but in theory, after this round of catch up, Captain Raydor can do them on her own.

With Brenda’s oversight, of course. 

Raydor comes in half an hour before Tao, with her leather folder and all her notes. Brenda just submits herself to the process, doesn’t even try to fight it. Tao’s evaluations are always smooth sailing. She’d be lost without him, he makes good choices more often than not. The worst that she could say about him is that his excitement for niche subjects can make him distractible, but his depth of knowledge comes in handy more than it doesn’t.

It’s a little like Brenda is being interrogated, but Captain Raydor does it with a gentleness that is so surprising that it disarms her. She asks quiet, probing questions about Mike and then writes out her notes in her loopy cursive. Brenda knows she’s just asking the questions on the form, the same questions she asks herself when she fills out their evaluations, but the Captain’s follow ups are astute. 

“You’ve been doin’ these longer than I have, probably,'' Brenda admits. “I have every confidence in a smooth transition.” 

“Still, it’s best to be as transparent as possible,” she says, gathering her notes. “He’ll be easy, I suspect, but the others not so much.” 

Brenda agrees but doesn’t admit it. With Provenza, she usually just signs off on him after a thirty second conversation. Reminds him to have some compassion every now and then and not make such sexist jokes and to be fair he is better than he used to be. A little. 

When Tao knocks on the door, Brenda waves him in and gives him her seat, going back to her desk.

“The Captain is driving today,” she says. “But I’m here if you need me.” 

She spends the twenty minutes that Captain Raydor talks to Tao about his performance over the last year flipping through the evidence for the murder of Kieth Milano, a holistic doctor with no medical degree and a knack for conning people out of large sums of money. 

Her phone buzzes and she glances at it. It’s a text from Fritz telling her that her mama’s plane has been delayed over three hours and he’s going to take the whole day off. And that he’s relocating her Stroh evidence from the wall of the guest room to a box. She feels a stab of irritation, though she knows her mama would not be okay with lying in bed, looking at a serial killer. 

“Chief, you have anything you want to add?” Captain Raydor asks.

She looks up at them. She certainly has not been paying attention, but Captain Raydor doesn’t look upset and Tao looks happy enough.

“Exemplary work as always, Lieutenant,” she says. 

“Thanks, Chief,” he says. “Captain.”

When he leaves, Captain Raydor gathers her things into her arms.

“Is that for tomorrow?” she asks lightly, looking at Brenda’s evidence binder. The Captain knows Brenda wasn’t listening but is too polite to say anything. 

“Yeah,” Brenda says. 

“Allocutions are fairly easy,” Captain Raydor says. “You’ll be in and out.”

“Maybe,” Brenda says. She just has a bad feeling about it, is all. 

“Okay, I’ll go put this into the system. You’ll get an email when it’s time to sign off and complete the evaluation.”

Brenda is looking at Russell Clark’s mugshot, the man who apparently strangled this charlatan doctor to death.

“Thank you, Sharon,” she murmurs. 

“Oh,” the Captain says. “Um, you’re welcome.” 

And she lets herself out.

oooo

Brenda accidentally gets home late, sucked into the Russell Clark evidence binder and then going down the Philip Stroh rabbit hole again, digging the mugshot out of her desk drawer and gazing into his dead eyes while she thinks about all the murderers she’s let slip through the cracks during her career. 

It’s nearly nine when she walks in and Fritz is in the living room, watching TV.

“Finally,” he says at the sight of her.

“Sorry,” she says. “Today did not go… like I planned. I got caught up in somethin’. Where is everyone?”

“Asleep,” he says. “It’s almost midnight in Atlanta. They were wiped out.” 

“I guess so,” she says, dropping her things on the floor by the door and flopping down next to him. “Are we still on for Disneyland tomorrow?”

“That’s up to you,” he says. 

“I just have the one little itty, bitty thing to do and then I’m all yours,” she promises. “Cross my heart.” 

He puts his arm around her and she relaxes against him. It’s not so bad, really.

“There’s leftover pizza,” he says.

“Ooh,” she says and shrugs his arm off of her to go into the kitchen and inspect what they’d left for her. The box is already in the fridge which is a real shame because she’d rather eat room temperature pizza than pizza reheated from cold. She pulls out two pieces and slides it onto a plate, eyeing the microwave warily. She takes one bite of it cold and then decides it’s worth the risk. She’ll just do a thirty second blast. Just to take the chill off. 

Fritz has turned off the television now and wandered into the kitchen, hovering right at the threshold where the pretty wood floors turn into linoleum. 

“I’m worried about your mother,” he says, softer here because they’re closer to the closed guest room door.

“Why?” Brenda asks, taking the plate out when the microwave beeps. “What did she say?”

“Nothing yet,” he says. “But she seems very tense.”

“I don’t think she much likes travelin’ without daddy,” Brenda says. 

“Maybe,” he says. She sets her plate on the table and sinks into a chair, the arches of her feet aching. She kicks her heels off under the table. 

“It isn’t like her to come out here spontaneously,” he says. 

It’s exactly like her, Brenda thinks. Her parents used to spontaneously appear in her life all the time when she was younger. In college, in grad school, even when she’d started working abroad. She’d mention in passing that she’d be home for a few days and they’d appear. 

“How would we see you otherwise?” her daddy would bark whenever she expressed her displeasure at the surprise, though not the visit. It wasn’t always bad. She’d always be fed well for a few days and her mama would usually change her sheets and do her laundry. Buy her a big grocery haul. 

But that had tapered off as her life had normalized into more steady jobs, especially once she moved back to Atlanta. Now she’s married off again. Now they call Fritz more than they call her because he answers on the first try. 

“I’m sure she’ll tell us all about it,” Brenda says. 

Fritz sits down in the chair next to her. “How was work?” he asks. 

“Fine,” she says. “I’m passin’ off staff evaluations to Captain Raydor, but I gotta sit in on one more round.” 

“How is Provenza going to feel about that?” he asks. 

“I’m not sure he knows,” Brenda says. “Not a bridge I need to cross quite yet.” 

“Put me on speaker phone when you do it,” Fritz says. He seems like he’s waiting for something, hesitates for a moment but her mouth is full of pizza and then he sighs, standing up, drops a kiss on her head. “I’m going back to the television,” he says.

She nods. 

After she eats, before she goes to bed, she stops at the closed guest room door and presses her ear against it. She just wants to hear some sound of life, but all is quiet in there and she won’t risk waking them up by opening the door to sneak a peek, so she takes herself to bed, instead. 

oooo

It’s certainly not necessary for Captain Raydor to come to the allocution of Russell Clark, but she asks if she can ride along and Brenda has no reason to say no. Brenda drives this time, because it’s a short distance and even she can’t screw it up. Captain Raydor rides in the passenger seat, her knees at an angle, her ankles crossed like she’s attending a royal event, not riding in a Crown Vic. 

Brenda cracks people for a living, is very good at it, but is having a hard time understanding the Captain. She can’t anticipate what she might do next, what she might say, and it’s driving her crazy. Some days Raydor is distant, cold, holding her own easily in that murder room full of men. Sometimes she’s gentle toward Brenda, inventing new ways to ease her load as an administrator. 

“You know,” she’d said the other day. “So many department heads are hands off. They let their squad do the work and sit in their office doing paperwork. It’s no wonder you were always drowning in it. You’ve essentially been doing two full time jobs for years.” 

She’d never thought of it like that, to be honest. And she really doesn’t know how other departments run - Robbery-Homicide perhaps is the one she’s seen the most of and that’s really just Commander Taylor coming around to imply he could do her job better while doing his own half as well. She likes to focus on what’s important, which is solving the murders and maybe in doing that, she leaves the larger picture behind. 

Something must be going right, though. Pope had approved a budget increase because of the large grant that Buzz had secured and that makes the Captain’s salary not so much of a burden, and that’s certainly thanks to Raydor’s diligence and head for numbers. Her working relationship with Pope has even recovered after her bait and switch to save Raydor. He’d told her good job, the other day and had seemed quite genuine. 

“I hear your family is in town?” Raydor says now.

“My mother and my niece,” she says. 

“You’re taking some time off, I hope,” Captain Raydor says.

“That’s the plan,” Brenda says. “I always try, anyway. I can’t help people gettin’ murdered!”

“Of course you can’t,” she says, easily enough. “An unavoidable part of the job.”

She’s all tensed up for a fight, white knuckles on the wheel, because she’s had this fight with Fritz a thousand times, so it’s surprising to hear Raydor take her side. 

“Can you tell my husband that?” Brenda says, with a shaky laugh. 

“You’d think he’d understand,” Captain Raydor says with a frown. “I’m sure he deals with time sensitive things.” 

“I thought that, too, once,” she says, flicking her turn signal to turn into the parking lot. “But it never seems to be the case with him.” She’s not sure if that says something about him or the FBI, but it says something. Maybe they’re just such a massive entity that there’s always someone to pick up the slack, always another agent with the exact same skill set. In the LAPD it’s only Brenda and no one comes by to sweep up after her. 

“Your mother must be very proud of you,” Sharon says. 

“Maybe,” Brenda says. “In her own way. I think she’d like grandchildren better.”

“Besides your niece?” Sharon presses gently. 

“Four children, and just one single granddaughter,” Brenda says. “Not what she’d hoped.” Brenda glances at her. “Do you have grandchildren, Captain?” 

Sharon makes a funny noise, somewhere between a laugh and a scoff. “Not yet.”

“I didn’t mean to be rude,” Brenda says, though she didn’t mean not to be. “I just remember your daughter was grown.”

“Yes, they’re certainly old enough,” Sharon concedes. “But no, they aren’t there yet and I’m not sure I am either.” 

The conversation drops as Brenda parks.

“Okay,” Brenda says when they are headed toward the building. She squints into the sun. The sky is endlessly blue and clear, smog hovering only lightly on the horizon. “Let’s hope we’re out of here lickity-split.” 

“What’s your plan with your family?” she asks.

“Disneyland,” Brenda says. 

Sharon frowns, glances at her wrist watch. “Bit of a late start.”

“What, are you some sort of Disneyland expert?” Brenda asks.

“I’m a local,” Sharon says, pulling open the courthouse door and holding it until Brenda walks through first. “We all are.” 

oooo

Brenda can see the moment the allocution goes off the rails, can picture the trainwreck so crystal clear. She could let it pass, go to Disneyland with her husband, her mama, and her niece. But whatever it is that’s inside of her that has led her to this career simply won’t let sleeping dogs lie. And so she leans over and whispers to Deputy District Attorney Hobbs knowing that it will cause disappointment from her mother, resentment from Commander Taylor, frustration from the team who is going to have to redo an entire case, and incandescent anger from her husband. 

But Russell Clark says he strangled Dr. Milano but he doesn’t know how Dr. Milano was strangled, and that’s a problem. 

“You’re the only one who wanted to go to Disneyland,” Fritz says when she tells them it’s going to have to wait. 

“Brenda Leigh, who is that you came in with?” her mama says, deflecting the conversation away from that very specific tone in Fritz’s voice. Apparently her mama can recognize it, too. 

Brenda looks over her shoulder to see Sharon and Andrea Hobbs conversing quite informally. Sharon reaches out to touch Andrea’s arm, even. They must know each other.

“Oh, that’s Captain Raydor. She replaced Detective Daniels in my division.” 

“She’s very pretty,” Willie Rae says. “Doesn’t look much like a cop.”

“She’s more of a bureaucrat,” Fritz says. 

That comment needles her in a bad way and she can’t help but snap, “That’s not true.”

“She’s coming over here, so maybe don’t talk about her,” Charlene says. 

Willie Rae puts on a big smile and says loudly, as soon as the Captain is in earshot, “Introduce me, Brenda Leigh!”

“Mama, this is Captain Sharon Raydor,” Brenda says. “Captain, Willie Rae Johnson, and my niece, Charlene.”

“It’s Charlie,” she says. 

“All right, Charlie, then,” Brenda corrects. 

Sharon shakes her mother’s hand and says warmly, “It’s a pleasure to meet you, ma’am.”

“And you!” Willie Rae says. 

“I’ll hope you’ll forgive today’s unexpected turn of events,” Sharon says. “We’ll try not to tie up the Chief for very long.”

“Good luck,” Fritz mutters. Sharon shoots him a hard, cold look. 

“Justice must prevail, Agent Howard, at all costs. Your wife is a harbinger of justice, do you disagree?” Sharon says. 

“Uh,” he says, clearly flustered. “No.”

“You all go on without me,” Brenda says. “I’ll be home for dinner, all right, at the lastest.” 

Fritz kisses her cheek and she hugs her mama and Charlie, too, who hugs her back stiffly, like it’s an obligation. Brenda doesn’t take it personally. The last time she spent more than half an hour with Charlie was what, five years ago? She’d still been a little girl, then, not this grown up young lady.

When her family has left, Brenda turns to Sharon. 

“I’m sorry,” Sharon says. “I didn’t mean to… it’s just what you said to me in the car about how your husband… about how Agent Howard doesn’t understand the importance of your job has been bothering me ever since, but I shouldn’t have been rude.” 

“It’s okay,” Brenda says, and she means it. “Thank you for standin’ up for me.” 

“You’re welcome,” she says. “Anyhow, Lieutenant Tao headed back right away. He said he had an idea and wanted to get started with Buzz.”

“Then let’s head back, too,” she says, readjusting her bag onto her shoulder. “Oh, could you grab the binder?”

“Sure thing,” Sharon says, and goes back to the table where Andrea is still standing, on the phone. Sharon touches her again, right on her back, just a light brush but it makes Andrea nod at her. 

“You know D.D.A. Hobbs?” Brenda asks, trying to sound casual. It is casual. She’s just curious.

“Yes,” Sharon says. It seems like that’s all she’s going to say but then finally adds, “We run in the same social circle.”

Brenda doesn’t even have a social circle. She doesn’t know anyone in Los Angeles besides Fritz and the people she works with and the criminals she tries to convict. She doesn’t know her neighbors, doesn’t have any outside hobbies. She barely even deals with the landlord because she’s never home. The very idea of having a social circle sounds exhausting. Where would she find the time? She brushed off her own mother today. 

“Fritz thinks I’m going to look back on my life and see nothing but crime scenes and murder,” Brenda says. She has no earthly idea why she says it, why she has voiced aloud a thought that ought to have stayed in her brain. They’re right outside the car now, but Brenda’s words bring Sharon to a full stop several paces away from the passenger side door. It’s breezy now, enough to whip Sharon’s long hair around and she pushes it away from her face and then puts a fist on her hip. 

“So what?” Sharon says finally. “If that’s the life you want.”

“Really?” Brenda asks. 

“I had this great therapist once,” Sharon says. “I expressed my concerns that so many people had told me I was too analytical, too cold. Always thinking with my head and not my heart. She said that thinking with my head worked for me, so why should I change that? I think of that advice so often. Chief, if focusing on your work is what’s right for you, then it’s what’s right for you. No one else can tell you otherwise.” 

“I… thank you, Captain,” Brenda says. “I feel… quite understood.” 

Sharon smiles. “You want me to drive this time?”

Brenda hands her the keys.

oooo

Captain Raydor’s words echo around inside her for the rest of the day and into the evening, keeping her distracted through dinner. She can tell her mama is flustered about something, but between Fritz radiating his disapproval at her, the case she’s trying to race through, and the bickering between her mama and her niece, she can’t hardly focus on one thing for more than a fleeting moment. 

She wishes, and not for the first time, that she was back alone in that little bungalow they sold, just her and Kitty and her work. 

“You want to see what a schizophrenic looks like off his meds?” Brenda says, picking up her plate. Charlie looks up, surprised. 

“Okay,” she says.

“Bring your dinner,” Brenda instructs. 

They have a television in their guest bedroom that Brenda mostly ignores, except it’s the only one with a VCR still attached. Fritz had tried to purge the VCR in the move to the duplex, but she’d insisted on keeping it so she could watch police footage at home. Buzz can put them onto DVDs now, she thinks, but it’s just an extra step.

Charlie watches the footage of James Clark intently, setting her dinner plate aside carefully on the comforter of the bed she’s sharing with her grandmother. Brenda feels a pang of guilt that she’s so far from her family, that they know as much about her as she does about them. It can’t be easy for Charlie. Her brother Bobby likes polo shirts and khakis. He likes long golf weekends and cocktails at five on the dot. He likes voting for republicans and the good old boys. And Charlie’s mother, Joyce, has always been nice enough to Brenda, but she knows they wouldn’t be friends if she weren’t married to Brenda’s brother. 

“How’s life back in Georgia?” Brenda asks when the tape ends. 

“If you can call it a life,” Charlie says. “Do you know they pulled me out of school? Because they hated my friends?”

“They can’t take you out of school,” Brenda says. 

“I homeschool now,” Charlie says. “It’s supposed to be my mom teaching me but it’s just a website that’s like, self-paced and mom doesn’t do anything.” 

Brenda shakes her head. 

“And they made me go stay with grandma and grandpa, which, I love them but is terrible. I just want my life back, Aunt Brenda.” 

“I’m sorry, honey,” Brenda says. “I really am.”

Later, Fritz says, “She’s out of control, according to your mother.”

“What did she do?” Brenda asks. “Kill a man?”

“Smoke pot,” Fritz says. “And maybe sleep with her boyfriend.” 

“Okay, well that isn’t great, but she’s not the first sixteen-year-old girl to do it. Does that merit pulling her out of school and kicking her out of her own house?” Brenda asks. “I’m sure Bobby and Joyce tried absolutely nothing and when that didn’t work, tried to make it mama’s problem.”

“Your mother wants Charlie to stay with us for a while,” Fritz says. 

“What?” she says. “They can’t keep fobbing her off like she’s someone else’s problem.” 

“I think it might be good for her,” Fritz says. “Good for us, too. Think of it as, you know, practice for if we have our own kids.” 

Brenda gets a familiar wave of heat, just the edge of nausea. She gets it any time he mentions having children. 

“Fritz,” she says, desperate now. “I just don’t think-”

“Don’t say yes or no now,” he says, cutting her off. “Just think about it.” 

She needs to tell him that she’s not going to have any babies. Not his, no anyone’s. She’s never wanted a baby, never understood what drives women to want it. Whatever it is, she doesn’t seem to have it. And she knows she’d be trash at it, because she can barely take care of herself. She had a parent growing up who was never around. Her father was often deployed or working nights, or away for long hours and she hated it. But she knows she won’t give up her job to take care of the baby, so she’d be the same way. 

“She’s just a normal teenager, doing normal teenage things,” Brenda says now. 

“What’s the worst thing you did as a teenager?” Fritz asks. 

“Same as anyone,” Brenda says. “Snuck beer, drove too fast. Smoked a cigarette, kissed a girl on a dare. Nothing too crazy.” 

“You kissed a girl?” Fritz asks. “I didn’t know that.”

“Margaret Kincaid,” Brenda says. “She was one grade behind me, in Bobby’s year.”

“And?” 

“And what, you never kissed a boy?” Brenda asks. 

“No!” he says. 

“Pity,” she says. “Kissing boys is fun.”

He grins at her, pulls her in for a kiss and it’s exactly what she wanted. To distract and diffuse. 

But she’s still not having his baby. 

oooo

She rescues Charlie and brings her to work with her. She seems like she needs a break from Willie Rae and her mama won’t admit it, but she might want a break from Charlie, too. 

Charlie doesn’t seem particularly wild in action or in spirit to Brenda. She’s on her phone a lot, but everyone says the same about Brenda. And they’ve taken everything else away from her. Her school, her friends, her home. That phone is all the girl has left.

“I can work on my school stuff,” Charlie assures her. “Just stick me anywhere.” 

“That boy, from the other day,” Brenda says. “The one who drew your picture in court, James? He’ll be in today.”

“Oh,” Charlie says. “From the video tape.”

“Yes, but that was months ago,” Brenda says. “He won’t be like that.” 

“Okay,” Charlie says. 

So Brenda sets up Charlie right next to her office, asking David and Julio to push a desk right next to the glass and for Buzz to get her all set up on a computer with internet.

“Put the surveillance on there too,” Brenda says. “Maybe she wants to watch her aunt work.”

When Brenda opens the blinds between her office and the desk Charlie is working at, Sharon says to her, “I’ve never seen you fully open your blinds before, Chief.”

“Good to let the light in, don’t you think, Captain?” Brenda says.

“You’re certainly letting something in,” Sharon says.

“Do you object?” Brenda asks.

“To you using your own niece to manipulate a mentally unstable murder suspect?” Sharon asks. “I think that’s wading fairly deep into ethically uncertain waters.” 

“Captain,” Brenda says. “I understand that in your previous position, upholding the moral and ethical standard of the LAPD was your job. However, I’ve found in my many years of public service that the criminals really don’t respect our standards, moral or otherwise.”

“You’re saying to catch a murderer, you have to think like a murderer,” Sharon says. 

“Precisely,” Brenda says.

“A slippery slope, I fear,” Sharon says. “If you think like a murder too long, you become, oh, Joey Olin?” 

“I know where my line is,” Brenda says. “I know what not to cross.” 

Sharon turns to gaze at Charlie through the glass. “I might sit and watch with her, Chief. Would that be alright with you?”

“Sure,” she says. “Of course.” 

She’s used to people watching her work, anyway, through a pane of glass or a camera it doesn’t matter. When James Clark comes into her murder room and her office, she’s ready for the interview. She takes one last look at Charlie and past her, a view of Sharon’s profile, of her posture, sitting ramrod straight.

She thinks fleetingly of Margaret Kincaid. Of whispering to her best friend Nancy to dare Brenda to kiss a girl. Of practically dragging Margaret into that closet. And when Margaret said they didn’t really have to do anything, no one would know, of threatening to tell everyone she was a liar if she didn’t kiss Brenda. A liar and a coward. 

She thinks fleetingly of where the line is and what constitutes crossing it, anyway, and then shuts the office door behind James Clark.


	6. i don't like anticipating my face in a red flush

_Everybody wonders what it would be like to love you_  
_Walk past, quick brush_  
_I don't like slow motion double vision in rose blush_  
_I don't like that falling feels like flying till the bone crush_  
_Everybody wants you_  
_But I don't like a gold rush_

**Gold Rush - Taylor Swift**

* 

Someone mails a dead body to Major Crimes. 

Once the bomb squad clears the plastic wrapped, duct-taped cooler, Lieutenant Provenza suggests opening it in the Chief’s office and it doesn’t occur to Sharon to say no, even though she’s technically in charge, because it doesn’t occur to Sharon that there might be a dead body inside. 

But there is. There definitely is. 

The smell hits her like a car hitting a concrete wall going 80 miles per hour. She’s lucky she’s standing where she is, because she can get sick right into the Chief’s garbage can. It’s embarrassing, sure, but not as embarrassing as Gabriel’s lunch splattering onto the hallway floor. She’d thought, after seeing the mangled body of Howard Greeson after two nights of being tied to the back of a pickup truck, that she could stand any sort of stomach churning crime scene but this smell is absolutely above and beyond.

Only Provenza has his wits about him to close the lid of the cooler and hold open the chief’s office door. He waves her out. She takes the trash can with her. 

“You want to call her or shall I?” he asks, reaching into his pocket and handing her a white handkerchief. She takes it, presses it to her mouth. It smells like a cologne her father would wear, but she’s grateful for the overpowering scent and it’s a kindness from him. 

“I’ll do it,” she says, once she’s wiped her mouth and dabbed at her eyes. “Give me a minute.”

“Take your time, Captain, he’s not going anywhere,” Provenze says, motioning to the cooler through the window of the Chief’s office. The blinds are still swinging from everyone’s hasty retreat. 

She takes the Chief’s trash into the restroom and ties off the bag, throwing it into the larger trash in there. She’ll have to take Lieutenant Provenza’s handkerchief home to wash it before she returns it. She rinses her mouth out with water and looks in the mirror. Her bottom mascara has smudged a little and she feels a little nauseous still, but it will pass. 

She leaves the trash can at her desk, sans liner, because she’s not going back into that office until she absolutely has to. She wonders if Lieutenant Provenza suspected what was inside and chose the Chief’s office to contain the smell, but Chief Johnson won’t be happy that her office reeks, that’s for sure. She’ll leave that part out of it on the phone. 

Finally she clears her throat and says, “I’m going to call her.” 

Everyone stops talking, watches her pick up the phone. She dials carefully, having memorized the Chief’s cell phone number by now and then looks up while it rings. Andy still looks a little green around the gills. Tao, too. Julio looks fine now and Gabriel hasn’t emerged from the bathroom yet. Someone has covered his mess with paper towels, at least. 

It rings three times before the Chief answers.

“Chief Johnson, this is Captain Raydor,” she says.

“Yes, Captain, I can see that,” she says. 

“I hate to call you when you’re spending time with your family, however, we seemed to have caught a crime scene,” she says, wincing. 

Provenza chuckles at his desk and says, “There’s a fun spin.” 

“Uh, shoot, okay, where is it?” the Chief asks. 

She’s somewhere outside, the Captain thinks, because there’s a lot of background noise. People and traffic. 

“Interestingly enough, it’s right here at Parker Center,” Sharon says. “I hate to say it, Chief, but I think you should come take a look.”

“Yes, Captain, all right. I’m on my way,” she says.

Sharon hangs up the phone. 

“That was good,” Andy says. 

“That was easy,” Sharon says. “Someone has to tell Chief Pope.”

“And that someone is Atlanta’s own Brenda Leigh Johnson,” Provenza says. “Let’s call the coroner just for fun though.” 

Sharon feels like she’s just waiting around for Chief Johnson, but the rest of the squad moves into action. Gabriel cleans up his mess, finally, and then tries to figure out who sent the cooler in the first place. Tao gets out his finger printing kit and dusts the cardboard box it came in, putting off dusting the plastic around the cooler itself. 

When Chief Johnson does show up, it’s with her husband and niece. Sharon is briefly horrified that Brenda would bring a sixteen-year-old girl along to see a dead body putrefying in a cooler before she remembers that she doesn’t know that’s what she’s walking into. 

The Chief is barreling toward her office to drop her purse no doubt and Sharon has to physically step in front of her to stop her. 

“Well for heaven’s sake!” Brenda says, obviously annoyed. 

“Before you go in there...” Sharon says. 

This causes Brenda to crane her neck to look past Sharon into the office.

“What is that?” she asks. “What in the world is that?”

“That’s your crime scene, Chief,” Andy says from his desk. “Buzz signed for it this morning.”

“My crime… no!” she says. She looks at Sharon who can only shrug apologetically. “Why is it in my office?”

“That was Lieutenant Provenza’s idea, I’m afraid,” Sharon says.

“Hey!” Provenza says.

“Well, it was,” Sanchez says. 

The Chief sighs and dumps her bag onto Sharon’s desk, getting herself a pair of gloves from the stack of boxes against the wall and snapping them on. 

“Go with her,” Sharon says to Gabriel. 

“Captain, I don’t think-”

“Oh, go, there’s nothing left in you to barf,” Provenza says. So he follows her in. 

They’re out again in a flash, the Chief saying, “Oh my _God_!”

“Doctor Morales is on the way,” Sharon says primly. She looks toward the door as if he might appear miraculously right on cue, but all she sees is Agent Howard rubbing his face and Charlie looking worried. 

“Is there a dead body in there?” she asks Sharon.

“I’m afraid so,” she says. “How about you and I go downstairs and get a hot chocolate while your aunt sorts it out.”

Charlie nods. “Okay.”

“Thank you,” Agent Howard says. 

It’s not totally selfless. She really doesn’t want to smell that cooler again.

oooo

Charlie Johnson puts on a good show of being indifferent, but to Sharon, she seems so sad. Sharon has made it through raising two teenagers on her own and Charlie doesn’t strike her as a true troublemaker. Not more than any other teenager. But she does seem lonely.

Sharon buys her not a hot chocolate, but an iced mocha at her request.

“Should we get one for Aunt Brenda?” Charlie muses, reaching for her little handbag like Sharon would let her pay for anything.

“Oh, I don’t think she’ll be in the mood to eat or drink anything for awhile,” Sharon says. There’s a coffee cart just outside the main doors of Parker Center, under a long awning. It’s a permanent installation that is made to look temporary, like it could up and roll away at a moment’s notice though Sharon can also see where the cart is padlocked to a thick metal ring in the concrete. 

So Charlie takes her iced concoction and Sharon just gets a cup of black coffee with a little room for cream. It’s a dangerous choice, one she might regret, putting coffee on an empty stomach that’s already roiling, but a risk she’s willing to take. There are small metal cafe tables and chairs sitting hot in the sun, too hot, even in winter. 

“Let’s go back inside,” Sharon says, holding the door for her. “I know where we can go.” 

There’s a family waiting lounge on the second floor and so she takes her there, lets her sit on a more padded chair in a quiet, air conditioned room. Charlie fiddles with her straw.

“Were you out seeing the sights?” Sharon asks.

“I guess,” Charlie says. “Some names in the sidewalk? Hands and feet and stuff.”

Sharon chuckles. “Not that interesting up close, huh?”

“No,” Charlie says. “I know they mean well, but I also know grandma just dumped me on them so it’s like, a pain in the ass to keep me.”

“I don’t think your aunt and uncle think of you as a pain in the ass,” Sharon says.

Charlie scoffs, says nothing, brings her straw to her mouth.

Sharon thinks, what would the Chief do? She’d start asking questions that she already knows the answers to. So Sharon says, “Do you have any brothers or sisters?”

“Nope,” Charlie says. “I’m the only one.”

“No cousins or anything?” Sharon asks. 

“No,” Charlie says. “Aunt Brenda is a workaholic. Uncle Jimmy is gay. Mama and daddy could only have me. I think they tried for more but it didn’t work for whatever reason. And Uncle Clay is… I think he has some sort of like… it’s not a disability, I don’t think. He’s like anti-social to the extreme. He likes to live alone in the woods. Everyone just lets him be.”

That could mean any number of things, Sharon muses. A learning disability that made interacting with the world difficult, a mild case of undiagnosed autism, or just introversion so severe that it’s easier to hide away. 

“The only grandchild,” Sharon says. “It must feel like there’s always a spotlight right on you, huh?”

Charlie nods. “Grandpa always is like, I don’t know, like I have to represent the entire Johnson family for all the rest of time and can never make any mistakes or have any experiences.” 

“You should talk to your aunt about it,” Sharon suggests.

“What does she know about it?”

“The only girl with three brothers? I bet you have more in common than you think,” Sharon says. “I bet she felt all sorts of pressure being the only girl.”

“But she got out, she was so smart,” Charlie says. “I’m not… like her.”

“I think you probably are, but I can’t say for sure because I don’t know you that well. But one thing I do know is that you might not be out permanently, but you’re certainly out right now. It might be a good time to look around and think about what you really want out of life.” 

Charlie nods. “I just want a little freedom now and then,” she says. “I just want to know that if I mess up, it’s not the end of the-”

But she stops and her shoulder slumps and when Sharon twists around to see what clammed her up and she sees that Agent Howard has come down to find them

“Here you guys are. She’s going to be awhile,” Agent Howard says. “I think we’re on our own.”

“I could just go back to the house,” Charlie says. “I don’t need babysitting. Maybe I could make you guys dinner?”

“I mean,” he says. 

Sharon can tell he wants to say yes and be free of her. 

“If you’re sure,” he says.

“You could come for dinner, Captain,” Charlie offers.

It’s mildly tempting to say yes. She nurtures a growing desire to know more about the Chief, more than she can glean from watching her work. Sharon wants to see her at home, to know if everything there matches her wide collection of vintage blazers - the furniture, the molding, the plumbing. 

However, it would be inappropriate to accept Charlie’s charming invitation and so she declines it.

“Another time, perhaps,” Sharon says gently.

Charlie’s face does fall, but she nods. 

“Sure,” she says.

“Come on,” Agent Howard says. “Let’s go.”

Charlie rises, throws away her empty cup, and shoulders her bag.

“Thank you,” Charlie says and after a small hesitation, gives Sharon a hug.

“Oh,” Sharon says, embracing her and giving her back a small pat. “You’re so welcome.”

Upstairs, Dr. Morales and his team are wheeling the cooler out of their bullpen. She gets another whiff of the decaying mess inside and she worries her stomach is going to revolt again but she swallows and holds her breath for a moment and it does pass.

“Did Fritz find y’all?” Chief Johnson asks when she spots Sharon. She’s holding her own cloth handkerchief tightly in her fist. Her office must still reek badly.

“Yes,” Sharon says.

“Thank you for takin’ her out of here,” Chief Johnson says. “It was thoughtful.”

“Totally selfless, I assure you,” Sharon says with a smirk. Chief Johnson smiles back and Sharon realizes she’s not seen her smile before, a real smile, displaying a row of small white teeth. 

“Chief!” Tao says from across the room. “You might want to see this.” 

The Chief reaches out, pats her elbow once, and crosses the room.

oooo

Sharon swears she can still smell the body on her when she gets home, trapped in her clothes and in her hair. Mostly, she showers, but when she goes into the bathroom, she has a change of heart and stops up the drain to run a bath. She doesn’t do it very often - it’s not the getting into the tub but the getting out that’s getting a little harder. Age rears its head in the most vulnerable and unkind places.

It’s worth it tonight, she thinks. 

Her son had given her a box of bath bombs for her birthday last and they’ve just sat in their box under the sink since then. But today she wants something strong and fragrant enough to help her forget the stench of death. She peruses the six options and chooses the pink and white one. The sticker says vanilla and coconut milk and jasmine. She can smell the jasmine right away. It’s a stronger scent than she usually cares for but not today. 

When the bath is half full, she drops it in and watches it a moment, fascinated to see it fizz and spin. Then she strips, drops her clothes in the hamper, already half full. After her bath, she’ll wash what’s in there. Clean as much of this day away as she can. 

The bath is slightly too hot, so she has to ease down into it. Her toes first, always the coldest place on her body, always the most painful part of any hot bath. Pain is fleeting, though, and quickly fades into something more pleasurable. 

By the time she turns off the water, the bath bomb has fizzed itself out and her water is a pearly pink. When she rubs her legs together, she can feel the oils in the water and it does smell nice. She isn’t the best at relaxing, but she closes her eyes, letting the warmth seep into her bones. Swirling her hands through the water. 

She can’t help it, her mind wanders back to Chief Johnson and her niece and her husband, whom Sharon finds handsome enough, but unlikable. Sharon has so much sympathy for the girl, though she knows she doesn’t have the whole story. She doesn’t know what Charlie has done to merit being sent away, surely something, but she seems smart and reasonable enough. Teenagers are teenagers. It’s part of the package of parenthood. She hopes the Chief can help Charlie through this tough time. She hopes she gets to see her again. Sharon misses her children, of course, but they’re grown now. What she really misses is just having kids around her. Being a mom day to day. Coming home to someone who loves her. 

She drains the tub, turns on the shower to wash her hair and her face. 

The pink swirls and fades and is gone soon enough, though the light scent of jasmine and the softness of her skin remains. 

When she gets out of the shower, into pajamas, and puts her glasses back on, she checks her phone only to see she has a missed call from the Chief and a voicemail. 

She really doesn’t want to roll out right now, plus they haven’t even figured out the whole dead guy in a cooler thing yet. It must be pretty high priority if they’re going to double up on cases. 

She plays the voicemail, holding the phone to her ear. But it’s not a normal message. It sounds like an accidental dial at first, just miscellaneous noise and laughter but then, the Chief’s voice saying “Let’s call her!” like she’s holding the phone far away from her mouth. And then, “Oh, I think I did!”

And Charlie’s voice saying, “Brenda, no, no! Hang up!” 

Then the line goes dead. She pulls the phone away from her ear and looks at it. The screen is a little wet from her hair, but the message was only seventeen seconds long. 

She decides to be grateful it’s not a roll out and doesn’t call her back.

oooo

The Chief is late, which is unlike her. She is the kind of person that, like anyone who lives in Los Angeles, is subject to the ebb and flow of traffic, but she’s not usually the last one to arrive. It’s nearly ten o’clock when she does come in and she looks worse for the wear. Tired and out of it. For all of Chief Johnson’s faults or quirks, she’s always put together, something Sharon has explained away as simply being southern. Coordinated outfits, always made up, hair curled, the stuff that stands out on any coast, though not always for the right reason.

But today her hair is half assed and her makeup is not covering up the dark circles under her eyes. She won’t look the Captain in the eye as she walks by, hurtling past her to her office. 

Though, when she opens the door, she lets it close again, bringing her arm to her face and closing her eyes tightly.

“Oh, hang on, hang on,” Provenza says, coming over with a white candle and a lighter. “Lauren sent this with me for your office.”

“Yeah, that oughta solve things,” Andy says dryly. 

Provenza stops to light it and then hands it to her.

“Can’t possibly hurt,” she mutters and then opens the door again.

She sets her stuff down, leaves the candle burning on the desk and then comes out again. 

“Chief, we have Greg Lewis in interview one,” Gabriel says. 

“Uh,” she says.

“The owner of the storage facility,” Sharon says softly. “He mailed us the cooler.”

“Yes,” she says. “Yes. I just need… just a moment.” 

They all watch her bolt down the hall toward the restrooms. The rest of the squad turns to look at Sharon. 

“I wonder which one of us is going to follow her into the women’s restroom,” Andy says after a moment of silence. 

“I’m not sure that’s completely necessary,” Sharon says. 

“No?” Andy asks. “Does this seem like a normal day with the Chief to you?”

“It might speed things up a little to just figure out what’s wrong,” Gabriel says. “I mean besides the fact that her office still smells like death.”

“All right,” she says. “If you insist.” 

She wonders if Irene Daniels had to put up with this. If she was expected to follow the Chief around, handling her emotions. Sharon considers the Chief to be a somewhat emotional person in that what she’s feeling seems to march right across her face, but Sharon has seen her turn it right off, too. Be having a meltdown about something silly in the hallway and then walk into an interview room and be completely in control; just ruthlessly break someone down and be fine about it afterward. 

She hesitates outside of the restroom door for just a moment and then opens it a few inches, listening to make sure she’s not just going to the bathroom. No one wants to be spoken to when they’re on the toilet. 

But no, she’s standing at the row of sinks.

“Chief?” Sharon says. 

She looks over at Sharon. “The guys send you in here to check on me?”

Sharon walks all the way in and lets the door bump closed softly behind her. “Yes.”

She chuckles dryly and looks at herself in the mirror.

“Just a rough night, Captain, no need to sound the alarm.” 

Sharon clears her throat and says, “You want to talk about it?”

Brenda looks at her. “With you?”

“With me,” Sharon says. “Why not?”

Brenda shakes her head. “It’s nothin’, just this stuff with Charlie is a little harder than I expected, that’s all.” 

“She’s interesting,” Sharon says, turning around so she can cross her arms and lean against the counter. “Seems very smart, very well mannered, and yet everyone keeps implying she’s out of control.” 

“It’s uh, drugs. And sex.” The Chief rubs her forehead. “Maybe that’s normal for teens out here but in Georgia, that’s outta control.”

“A lot of pressure on her to be perfect,” Sharon points out. “Maybe too much for a sixteen-year-old.” 

“Maybe,” Brenda says. 

“You called me, you know,” Sharon says. “Last night.”

The Chief winces. “Did I?”

“I couldn’t hear much in the message. Just giggling.” 

“Sorry to disturb you, then,” she says. “I think… she wanted you to come for dinner.” 

“She invited me, actually, but it didn’t seem, um, appropriate,” Sharon says. “To intrude on your family time.”

“She likes you,” she says. “What has she spent with you, ten minutes?”

“It’s a mom thing,” Sharon says. “I turned on the mom for her. I think she misses it. No one wants to be sent away.” 

“I don’t have the mom thing, trust me,” Chief Johnson says, reaching out to turn on the water. She runs her hands under it, turning her wrists up so the cold water runs over them. 

“What happened last night?” Sharon asks. It’s certainly none of her business but curiosity is overwhelming her and it might do the Chief some good just to say it out loud.

“Charlie made us dinner,” she says. “And when I got home, I could smell that she had baked something. Dinner wasn’t ready, so I found that she had made some brownies but they were in her room. But there was a whole pile of them so I snuck a few and then…” 

It takes her a moment to figure out what the Chief is implying but all of a sudden it occurs to her. “Oh! Goodness. How, uh, how many did you eat?”

“Three,” the Chief says. “And I was just… gone.” 

“How did she… did she carry on the plane? Buy it here?”

“Fritz says she had a package delivered from a friend,” the Chief says. And then something changes. Sharon can see it. Her lip wobbles. “Fritz was _so mad_.” Her eyes are welling up.

“Oh, okay, all right,” Sharon says, reaching for a paper towel and yanking it out of the dispenser. “It’s not so bad.” 

“Not bad? I’m hungover at work, my husband is going to kick my niece out, someone sent us a body in the _mail_ , and I’m cryin’ in a bathroom about it all,” she says yanking the paper towel out of Sharons hands and wadding it up so she can press it under her eyes. 

“Chief,” she says and then more gently, “Brenda, please don’t kick her out.”

“I’m not going to!” she says. “Jesus. I’m not going to let him.” 

“Okay, good. Because I think being sent away a third time… would be detrimental.” 

She nods. “Okay. I gotta pull it together.”

“Yes,” Sharon says. 

There’s a knock. 

“Chief?” Provenza says. Sharon rolls her eyes, pulls open the door enough to see him.

“Yes, Lieutenant,” she says. 

“Doctor Terrance called to confirm that the body is, in fact, Doug Courtney,” Provenza says. “You want us to do the notification?”

“No,” Chief Johnson says. “I’ll take David. He needs the practice for the Detective’s Exam.”

He nods and turns away.

“Thank you for the pep talk, Sharon,” she says. “Thank you.” 

Sharon nods. “Anytime, Chief.”

oooo

It’s the Chief’s idea to mail coolers to all the suspects. After all, anyone who knows what’s inside won’t open it. It’s a particularly clever move, though an expensive one. It eats up the end of Buzz’s grant money, which had been a nice little cushion in their budget. Sharon will go home at the eight hour mark, save them the money. 

Before she leaves, the rest of them following the tracking devices in the coolers on Tao’s laptop, she pulls the Chief aside and says, “Why don’t you and Charlie come to dinner at my place. And your husband too, if you’d like. Or not, if you’d rather.” 

“Uh,” she says. 

“I just think it might be nice for her to feel wanted,” Sharon says. 

“I’ll ask her,” she says. “I’ll let you know.”

Too bold, maybe, too familiar. But it had seemed like the right thing to do. If only to get Charlie away from her angry Uncle for just an evening. Chief Johnson can certainly say no, it’s no skin off Sharon’s nose. 

It is, however, getting harder to leave on time when the rest of the squad is staying to wrap up a case. She’s starting to feel more like a member of the squad and less like a squatter, but packing up at five pm to go home when they’re all still working certainly throws a wrench in that. 

“Bye Captain,” Andy says, giving her a smug little wave.

She narrows her eyes at him and turns to leave without returning the sentiment. 

oooo

They must be out all night, because it’s early Saturday morning when Sharon receives two texts from the Chief. The first one says, _We caught Jordan Wallace burying his cooler in the desert._

And then, _Charlie and I can come tonight, if the offer still stands._

No Agent Howard then, not that Sharon minds that at all. She’d prefer not to have that man in her home. She wonders if it was ugly, him trying to send Charlie away and the Chief putting her foot down. She wonders who came out on top.

She pecks out her reply. _How about 7:00?_

_Thank you, Captain._

At least now she has a plan for a weekend day she’d planned to spend alone. She’ll sweep and mop the floors. Clean the bathroom. Go to Whole Foods. Set the table with something nice. Maybe get some flowers. Something pretty to look at, that will last until well after Chief Johnson and her niece come and go. A spot of color to carry her through the week. 

Yes, Sharon thinks, making a mental list. First things first, flowers.


	7. after a while, one and one don't make two

_Nobody knows you and I were day and night_  
_We were throwing stones, but it always looked good on the outside_  
_I got to know you a little too well_  
_I tried to love you, but love is hell, yeah_

**Back Together - Jill Andrews**

*

“I can’t believe you made me leave my phone at home,” Charlie says, sulking in the passenger's seat, slumped down so far her chin is touching the strap of the seatbelt that crosses her chest. 

“Oh, you have an important call scheduled for the middle of dinner?” Brenda asks, annoyed. She’s irritated and has been irritated all day. She can’t remember if she was ever this snotty as a teenager. Surely, yes, but Brenda was one of four children and though it was her father that was an Army captain, it was her mama that ran that house with military precision. Most of her elementary school years were spent with her nose in a book, but once she reached Charlie’s age, she realized that the more extracurriculars that kept her out of the house, the better. 

It seems like now, parents just stick a screen in front of their children and then wonder why they don’t know how to act. 

“You play any sports in school?” Brenda asks, when Charlie doesn’t answer her rhetorical question. 

“What?” she says. “No.”

“Cheerleading? Yearbook? Church youth group?” Brenda presses.

Charlie rolls her eyes. “No.” 

“Nothin’ at all?” Brenda says. Brenda knows she didn’t have a part time job, she just can’t see Bobby allowing that. 

“I went to school, isn’t that enough?” Charlie asks. 

“You’re going to have to fill out college applications soon,” Brenda says. “What do you plan to put on them?”

“You sound like mama,” Charlie says. 

“If I had nothin’ to do and nowhere to go, I’d get in trouble too,” Brenda says. “Isn’t it boring? Going to school and comin’ home and goin’ to school and comin’ home?”

“Yes,” she says. “I mean I have homework. Church on Sundays,” she says. “Did you do all that stuff in high school?”

“I played tennis,” Brenda says. “I worked on the school newspaper. I was a cheerleading alternate, just to please grandma.”

Charlie smiles a little at that. 

“Sometimes life is a little easier with structure,” Brenda says. 

“Oh, everything is easy to you,” Charlie says, her face falling again.

“Well,” Brenda says, surprised. “That just ain’t true!”

It’s a happier occasion when Brenda knocks on Sharon’s condo door this time but only by a little. 

“Be nice,” Brenda says. “Be polite.”

“Jesus,” Charlie says, just as Sharon opens the door. Brenda knows she must have heard at least some of that exchange, but she just smiles warmly.

“Come on in,” she says.

Brenda can immediately smell whatever is cooking and it smells good. She realizes that they should have brought something. A bottle of wine, dessert, a plant, something, but it had been enough to just get Charlie in the car and get here. She wanted to stand in the living room and argue about her cell phone for all eternity. Fritz had been watching football, ignoring them both. He feels slighted about not being invited to go with them, though he wouldn’t even want to go if he had been invited. She’d spun some yarn about it being a girls night.

“I thought you didn’t like Raydor,” he’d said.

“No, it was that I thought she didn’t like me,” Brenda had corrected absently. 

“So you do like her?” he’d pressed. 

“I mean, sure,” Brenda had admitted. “I guess I kinda do, now.”

Fritz had finally stopped the arguing about Charlie’s phone by yelling at them to be quiet and just go already. She and Charlie had both flinched and for a moment, Brenda’s husband was unrecognizable to her. Red in the face, neck strained, gripping the remote control so tightly it might break in his hand.

“Whatever,” Charlie had whispered. “Let’s just go.” 

She doesn’t like this version of Fritz, the one who snaps. Yells and breaks plates. It makes her all the more determined that having a baby is a bad idea. She’s not fit for motherhood in her own eyes and it’s certainly looking like Fritz wouldn’t make father of the year either.

“Can I get you guys something to drink?” Sharon offers. They’ve shrugged off their coats and Sharon has already taken them, hung them on hooks by her door. She has a little table there, with her purse and keys and her badge. Brenda would bet good money that her sidearm sits there too, usually, but has been put away for Charlie’s benefit. 

“I’m okay,” Charlie says, walking into the living room and looking around.

“Water?” Sharon asks, looking at her. “I have coffee or tea or… something stronger?”

“Stronger is good,” Brenda admits. 

“I’m afraid I’m not much of a beer drinker,” Sharon says, heading into the kitchen. Brenda follows, but stays on the other side of the counter, out of the way. “But I have some wine, or… let’s see.”

She’s opening a cupboard now, peering up at the bottles on the highest shelf. 

“Wine would be wonderful,” Brenda says, before it all gets too complicated. “It’s what I prefer.”

“White or red?” Sharon asks.

“Red, please,” she says. 

Charlie has inspected the living room and circled back to them. Brenda has been here before but can see small changes in a quick sweep of the place. She’s got more lights on to give the space a cozy feeling. A candle is lit on the coffee table. Flowers on the dining table, already set for three. 

“Thank you for coming, by the way,” Sharon says. “Dinner should be ready in just a few minutes.”

“Thank you for having us, right Charlie?” Brenda says.

“Yeah,” she says. “What are we having?”

“Enchiladas,” Sharon says. “I hope that’s okay?”

“Sure,” Charlie says. “As long as Aunt Brenda says it’s okay, that is.” She gives Brenda a fake, awful little smile. 

“Yes,” Brenda says, sending a hard look back. “Thank you.”

“Do you live alone?” Charlie asks Sharon, while looking back at the living space of the condo over her shoulder.

Sharon gets the cork out of the wine bottle with a pop that Brenda dearly loves to hear and says, “Yes, I do. My children are grown up and moved out.” 

“So you aren’t married then,” Charlie says. 

“Charlie!” Brenda says. 

“It’s alright,” Sharon says.

“That’s absolutely none of your business,” Brenda says. “Why are you bein’ so rude?”

“I’m not being rude, I’m just being curious,” Charlie says. “God, no one talks about anything, everything is a secret!” 

“Chief,” Sharon says. “It’s okay, really.”

“Sixteen-years-old and no one has ever once thought to teach you about tact,” Brenda says to her niece.

Sharon chortles, low in her throat.

“What?” Brenda demands. 

“It’s just… no, nothing,” Sharon says, sliding her the glass of wine. “I don’t mind curiosity, Charlie. In fact, I am married.”

“What?” Charlie says.

“What?” Brenda says. 

“I’m legally separated, we have been for a number of years, but we have not officially divorced,” Sharon says. “It’s a Catholic thing.” The timer on the oven goes off. “Excuse me for a moment.” 

“Please go sit down,” Brenda says quietly to Charlie who rolls her eyes and goes to the living room to sit down on the couch. Brenda hesitates, wondering if she should offer to help, but Sharon has her back to Brenda, pulling a Pyrex dish out of the oven, and so Brenda follows, sitting in the armchair across from Charlie. 

“I’m trying to be good,” Charlie says, softly. “I don’t know what you want from me!” 

And maybe Brenda does feel a touch on edge. The last time she was here, she got to swan in and out, just a single stop in a very long day of fixing something she didn’t break. She felt empowered, felt above Captain Raydor, like she was standing on a stage, extending a hand to pull her up.

But now, of course, she knows Sharon Raydor a little more. Has butted heads with her, has conceded things, has learned things from her. How to be distant, cool, hard, graceful. While she outranks Sharon at work, she’s just not sure she outranks her in life, and they aren’t at work right now, so she feels edgy, that’s all. 

She also feels some type of way about learning that she’s married. It gives her an ache in her chest, a rumbling in her gut. She doesn’t like it, though she couldn’t say why. She feels duped, which doesn’t make sense because Sharon’s personal life really doesn’t affect her one way or the other. Brenda herself is married, it’s a thing that happens to people. It’s just she thought one thing and was wrong and Brenda hates when that happens.

“Okay,” Sharon says. “You guys ready?”

She feels a little better after they eat, so maybe she’d just been hungry before and taking it out on Charlie. Sharon handles the meal deftly, both cooking it and eating it. She keeps the conversation flowing by asking Charlie about herself, teasing out things that even Brenda didn’t necessarily know about her own niece. Her favorite book - she’d most recently read _The Hunger Games_ and liked it, but her favorite book is _The Perks of Being a Wallflower_. She likes California, but she misses Georgia because it never gets cold here and she thinks that’s boring. She hopes her mama and daddy let her come home for Christmas.

“Grandpa Clay is coming to get you next week,” Brenda says, her heart breaking for Charlie. 

“Yeah, to go back to their house,” Charlie says. “Not home.” 

“Do you want to see the best thing about living alone?” Sharon says. 

“Okay,” Charlie agrees.

“You too, Chief, come on,” Sharon says. “I’m going to show you somewhere most people never get to see.”

“What?” Charlie asks, a glimmer of excitement.

“My bedroom,” Sharon says, throwing a wink at… it seems like it was aimed at Brenda, actually, but she can’t be sure. 

So they push their chairs back and Sharon leads them down the hall to the closed bedroom door.

And when they’re there with her, waiting, she opens the door and reveals a sizable master bedroom. Big enough for a queen sized bed, a large dresser, a big window that faces the view they can see from the living room. Sharon reaches over to the wall to flip a switch and instead of overhead lights coming on, a small christmas tree lights up in the corner of the room. Multicolored lights, some glass ball ornaments to reflect the glow further out into the room. It’s maybe three feet and Brenda can see from the indentation in the carpet that usually an armchair sits there, probably. Something square with four feet. 

Charlie gasps with surprise. “It’s not even Thanksgiving!”

“I know,” Sharon says. “But I just love Christmas and no one knows it’s here, but me.” She smiles at Charlie. “And now you, of course, and the Chief. But I think you’ll keep my secret.”

“Definitely,” Charlie says. 

“Now, Miss Johnson, you can help me clear the table and then maybe something sweet before you ladies head home, hmm?” Sharon says, standing at the open bedroom door. 

“Got it,” Charlie says, heading back to the living room. Brenda takes one last look at the bedroom - the perfectly made bed, the glimpse of walk-in closet, the silver framed pictures on the dresser. 

“Sharon,” she says softly. “I… thank you.”

“No need, Chief,” Sharon says, but she sounds all business now. That gentle wonder she injects into her tone just for Charlie, that unfamiliar warmth, well, that doesn’t seem to carry over to Brenda alone. “She’s a sweet girl. She’ll find her way.” 

“I hope so,” Brenda says.

Sharon closes the door behind them. “She has you,” she says. “It’s a good start.”

Dessert is three perfect cupcakes bought from a bakery. So sweet, so lovely, Brenda could cry. 

oooo

It seems like Brenda and Charlie were in an okay place when they left Sharon’s, but now they’re fighting all over again. Arguing in the car about that damn cell phone again, about apologies, about how Brenda feels like Charlie hasn’t apologized to her, only to Fritz. 

“Whatever,” Charlie says, the last word with any teenager. And then, “Why are those kids running?”

It turns out it’s because someone at this school has a gun. 

Brenda’s instincts kick in. She takes her badge and her sidearm and warns Charlie to stay in the car, which of course she ignores. Brenda finds one kid down, already dead, and one injured under the car. When the black and whites arrive, Brenda helps direct the scene and then puts Charlie in a squad car and tells them to follow her to the hospital. 

It’s because she’s so mad at Charlie that she leaves her in the hospital waiting room where the shot kid has been admitted. Charlie is sixteen, she’s not a little girl anymore. She can look after herself for a few hours, can sit and stew in the consequences of her own actions and maybe the consequences of someone else’s too. 

However, when she’s back in the murder room, barking orders and clearing off the white board so they can start the circus over again, Captain Raydor says, “Chief, where’s Charlie?”

She sees Provenza and Flynn exchange a worried glance, but it’s not until she’s halfway through her sentence that she knows she’s screwed up. “I left her in the hospital to wait for Jake Burrell to wake up.”

“You left her?” Sharon says. “Alone?”

Brenda doesn’t feel like a scolding right now, she’s got bigger things to deal with. Like a gunman murdering the children of Los Angeles. A possible gang situation, or a drug deal gone wrong. All things bigger than one kid, sitting in a seat bored for a few hours. But still, as she watches Sharon quietly pick up her bag and her coat and walk out of the murder room, she feels a heat crawl up her neck, like how she used to get in school when her teachers would snap at her for talking. When she brought home a B on a test. When she missed the bus because she was preening in the bathroom and had to call her mama for a ride. Just tiny pinpricks of shame. 

oooo

Fritz goes with her to pick up Charlie and gives her a whole long lecture, one that Sharon had managed to convey in four words. Brenda feels guilty, though, thinking of Sharon’s expression as she hurried out of the murder room, so she sits there and lets Fritz scold her. 

“She’s not alone,” Brenda says finally. “She’s with Captain Raydor.” 

“Captain Raydor spends more time parenting her than you do!” Fritz says, not mollified at all, apparently. 

“How much did you expect me to accomplish in three weeks?” Brenda asks. “My parents gave us no warnin’, no information about what’s really goin’ on in her home. We know what she’s been pullin’ but not why. I know Bobby and Joyce are at least partially to blame. At least Sharon has successfully raised two functional adults which is more than my brother or I or _you_ have done, for that matter, so frankly, Charlie is better off with her!” She feels a little better after the outburst and it does quiet him for a moment. 

“I just think-” he says, gearing up again.

“Fritz,” she says, cutting him off and rubbing her forehead. “I honestly do not care what you think in this moment. All you’ve done is yell at her and now she’s scared of you! How is that any better than what I’m doin’? Huh?”

“At least I’m trying,” he mutters. 

“Are you? Am I not?” she snaps. She resumes digging in her purse and finally fishes her phone out. One text from Sharon that simply says _ETA?_.

She pecks out _almost there_ and hits send. 

“It makes me worry about what’s going to happen when we have a baby,” he says. “I just don’t want to have to be the only one who picks up slack.” 

“Well you don’t have to worry about that,” Brenda says. “Because I’m not having a baby.” 

It takes all of her willpower not to add ‘with you’ to the end of that sentence. With anyone, really, but adding that would be petty.

“It’s not fair of you to make that decision for the both of us,” Fritz says. He’s pulling into a parking space. 

“Then find a wife willin’ to work with you on it,” Brenda says, opening the door before the car has even stopped all the way. “You don’t need to come in, Captain Raydor will give us a ride home.”

And she slams the door hard, right in his surprised face.

Just to be petty.

oooo

It’s a relief to have Charlie out of the house, though she feels like a monster to think it. She hopes that she had done some good for the girl and not just traumatized her. Fritz hadn’t been especially kind to Brenda about it. 

“You forced that girl to get close to a boy you knew would die,” he’d said in bed the night after she’d wrapped her case, once Charlie had stopped crying and calmed down. 

“I didn’t know,” she had replied and it had been the truth. She hadn’t known for sure. But, death is always a possibility, if the job had taught her anything, it was that. 

Her daddy had been planning to fly out to Los Angeles to collect Charlie, but Brenda had negotiated that down to an Atlanta airport pickup. “She’s old enough to sit on a plane by herself,” Brenda had said. The last and maybe only kindness she could provide for the girl.

Once they’d gotten her on the plane, she’d called her brother on the drive home, Fritz behind the wheel. “Bobby,” Brenda said. “You bring that girl home and you put her back in school. If I have learned anything over the past few weeks, it’s that if you can’t handle your daughter, the problem ain’t her, it’s most definitely you. Figure your shit out and be a better parent.” 

She’s not wildly popular with any of her family right now, that’s for sure. But Charlie had texted her and said that she was back home and that she’d go back to school after Christmas break so that’s something. 

With Charlie gone, however, Brenda and her husband sort of drift apart again, back to their separate lives. Fritz leans hard into his work, going in early and coming home late. He goes to more meetings, making snide comments about how he feels unsettled knowing there were drugs in his house. Like Brenda is the one who’d snuck it in and not the victim of that situation. 

And her outburst about children hangs between them. They haven’t talked about it. Brenda isn’t going to be the one to bring it up, but she can see that he’s mad about it, sulky and moody and distant. The distance, though, is a pleasure. She feels relieved. 

Brenda usually is the one to go headfirst into work when all the other parts of her life start to fall apart, but she feels wrung out after this last case. She usually doesn’t dwell in her decisions, doesn’t often look back in regret at what she’d needed to do to get her confession, to close her case. This feels different, though. She starts to wonder if she’s all those things her husband said. Starts to wonder if she didn’t acutely deserve that look that Captain Raydor had leveled at her when she dropped everything to go sit with Charlie in that emergency room. 

Maybe Captain Raydor doesn’t like how Brenda handled her time with her niece. It’s all Brenda can figure, the only explanation she can come up with as to why the cool distance has returned to their interactions. Raydor certainly follows orders, does her job and does it well but she’s almost unrecognizable to the woman who’d come into the restroom to console her, who’d said her name so softly. _Brenda_.

She’d noticed, of course, and has noticed, too, that Sharon has never called her that again. 

She’s sitting in her office, twisting her wedding ring around her finger, thinking about Jake Burrell and more specifically, his mother. She hadn’t had to notify him that her son was dead, for once. The hospital did that, but she had waited for him in the waiting room with Lieutenant Provenza. She hadn’t needed to talk to her to close the case but it had seemed the right thing to do. She’d watched the boy die, had been with him in his last moments.

She’s seen a lot of people die in this line of work but they aren’t usually so young. It’s different in a hospital bed, holding his hand, then watching a criminal bleed out on the street. This was so intimate and this case so hard and she feels a little used up by the last month. Like she’s up against a wall. 

The boy’s mother had stumbled out in a daze some hours later, still in her flight attendant’s uniform, her face swollen and her heart broken. One of the nurses had pointed out Brenda. She hadn’t asked anything of the woman, only offered herself as a resource and when the mother had asked what his last moment’s had been like, she lied.

“So peaceful,” Brenda had promised. “He was an angel. He’s one now.” 

She’d asked Provenza, on the ride back, about his kids. 

“How do you bring them into this world knowing how the outcome might be?” she’d asked.

“You just do,” he’d said. “You just hope for the best.” 

An unsatisfying answer if ever there was one, and it still doesn’t sit right with her. She knows that she doesn’t always make the most ethically sound choices, but having a baby seems, to her, unethical and she just can’t make it balance out right.

“Chief?”

She looks up, startled, jams her hands into her lap, knocking her knuckle on the desk on the way down and it hurts. 

“I’m so sorry,” Raydor says. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”

“No, Captain, it’s all right. Come on in,” she says. “What can I do for you?”

“I’m about ready to wrap up for the day,” she says. “Is there anything I can do for you?”

“Um,” she says. “No, I don’t think so. Thank you, though.” 

“Okay,” Sharon says, turns to go and then just makes a full turn, spinning back around to look at Brenda again. 

“Chief,” she says. 

_Ah_ , Brenda thinks. Here it is - Sharon can’t hold it in anymore. She’s going to chew Brenda out or make clear her disappointment or maybe even admit that it’s not working out, her on Major Crimes and she’s going to leave.

“Do you want to go get a drink?” Sharon says. 

Brenda blinks, unsure if she heard that correctly. She’d been braced, but not for an invitation. Maybe the dinner at her condo hadn’t ended as badly as it had started, but she still feels like maybe it could have gone better. And it had all been for Charlie, anyway, who is gone now. 

“Uh,” Brenda says.

“The guys can wrap this up,” Sharon says. “We could just… get out of here for a bit.”

“A drink,” Brenda says.

“Unless you need to rush home, which I would understand,” Sharon says.

“No,” Brenda blurts. “I mean, no to goin’ home. But I could… a drink sounds, um. Fine.” 

“Good,” Sharon says with a little smile. Brenda can almost see teeth. “I know the perfect place. I’ll drive.” 

She digs her phone out of her purse and taps out a tentative message to Fritz. Not a lie, exactly, but maybe not so accurate. Something she could spin into truth if she has to. 

_Working late._

She hits send.

oooo

They leave Brenda’s car behind in the garage, but she doesn’t care about those logistics right now. Sharon’s car is like her condo - clean and organized. No trash in the cupholders, no menagerie of forgotten sweaters in the backseat. She drives quietly, calmly. Brenda tries not to feel obligated to fill the silence with small talk. She just enjoys the ride. 

When they arrive after a good twenty minutes of silence - stressful at first but melting into companionable by the end - Sharon parks outside not a bar, but a restaurant. 

“Mama’s?” Brenda asks. “I was expecting a bar.”

“Jackson was a barely functional alcoholic,” Sharon says. “I’ve been to every bar in this city to pick him and drag him home. I don’t really like bars, anymore.”

“Ah,” Brenda says.

“We don’t have to eat, Chief, but there’s something here I think might suit you.”

The restaurant is a southern comfort food establishment and it bristles, for some reason. 

“Because I’m southern?” she asks hotly.

“No,” Sharon says, locking the car with her fob. “Because you have a sweet tooth.” 

Well, that is true, so she holds her coat tight to her body and follows Sharon inside. It’s warm inside, and cozy and there’s plenty of people but it isn’t too crowded for a week night. 

“We’d like to sit at the bar, please,” Sharon says to the hostess.

“Bar is open seating,” the hostess replies. “Any of the high top tables, if they’re available, are fine too.” 

Sharon thanks her and heads into the bar area, Brenda trailing her. She almost bumps right into the back of her when Sharon stops, gets close enough that she gets a whiff of Sharon’s hair. It smells like an expensive salon, like something luxurious and dreamlike. 

“There,” Sharon says, gesturing to an empty high top table near the back corner of the bar area. And then she’s off like a shot, making a beeline for the table like there’s a crowd of people she’s going to have to fight it for. Brenda just follows the smell. 

The table has been bussed recently enough that the top is slightly wet and Brenda sets her purse on the empty chair. There are four chairs, but Sharon sets her much smaller bag on the same chair, next to Brenda’s tote, which seems enormous in comparison. 

“I like this place because of the-” But she stops abruptly because there’s a server approaching them already. A young woman with hair dyed black and both arms covered in tattoos. A silver hoop in her nose. But she smiles at them and her smile is very pretty.

“Welcome to Mama’s,” she says, sounding like not only is she not southern, but has never once stepped foot below the Mason-Dixon line. “I’m Jen, I’ll be your server. Do you guys want dinner menus or are you just here for happy hour?”

“Happy hour,” Sharon says confidently. 

“There’s some goodies there on the back of your bar menus,” Jen says, gesturing to the menus stuffed in a black metal holder between them. “Unless you already know what you want to drink?”

“I think just water for now, while we look,” Sharon says. 

Brenda knows what she wants to drink, because it’s always a big glass of merlot. If they sold wine in buckets, it might be that, tonight. Sharon seems like she wants to be in charge of this outing, so Brenda just lets that happen. There’s no sense in fighting against Sharon for sport. She’s too good at it, more than competent enough to go toe to toe with Brenda, so Brenda saves it up for when she really needs it. 

“Anyway,” Sharon says. “I like this place because of the milkshakes.”

“Milkshakes?” Brenda asks. She’s never known another adult who invited someone out for drinks and didn’t mean alcohol. Brenda loves a milkshake, of course, but this is not what she’d expected.

“Don’t worry, Chief,” Sharon says with a smirk. “They’re boozy milkshakes.” 

Brenda lets out a relieved laugh and says, “Oh thank goodness, I was about to either be disappointed or disappoint you.” 

Sharon hands her a menu. There’s not a lot of choices, but Brenda is happy enough ordering a chocolate milkshake with bourbon and Sharon orders the banana cream with rum and they order a couple of the happy hour appetizers. 

“You know,” Brenda says, when they’re waiting on everything and only have water. “I thought maybe… it seemed like perhaps you didn’t approve of the way I handled things with Charlie.” 

Sharon sighs, leans back in her chair.

“I think that the way you’re dedicated to your work is something quite lovely,” she says. “And we should be… we’ve sworn to protect the people of this city and that’s not a load one bears lightly. It did surprise me, perhaps, a little. Your approach and sometimes your methods but… I thought about it and I realized that if you were a man, no one would ever even think to question your dedication to your job. If you put it ahead of your family or your marriage. No one. So why was I holding you to a different standard?” Sharon shakes her head. “So I invited you out this evening so I could apologize.”

“You didn’t need to do that,” Brenda says.

“I did,” Sharon says, touching her hand to her chest. “I did need to. Charlie is a lovely kid but she’s not your responsibility.”

Brenda feels that hot heat again up her neck. “She asked to stay,” Brenda admits. “She didn’t want to go and I… I made her go back because I know that as much as I love her, I really don’t have the capacity to… and I feel awful and she hates me, I think, and my father hates me because I didn’t let him come out to get her, I just sent her home and my brother hates me because I told him to do his job as a parent and I just feel so wrung out about it.” She swipes at her eyes, leans back suddenly because she can see their server coming back with the milkshakes. She plasters on a smile, changes gears and says, “Would you look at those!”

“Just a few more minutes on those apps, ladies. Do you need anything else? No? Enjoy!” 

Brenda composes herself by unwrapping her straw, plucking the bright red cherry off the top of the mountain of whipped cream and putting it into her mouth. And, oh, the sweetness does help to ground her a little. Gives her a little jolt of something good, good enough that she can look up at Sharon who is looking at her with concern.

Brenda waves it away, swallows the cherry and says, “Goodness, Captain, I’m so sorry, I did not mean to just dump that into your lap!”

“Chief…”

“Apology accepted, if you accept mine,” Brenda says.

“What are you apologizing to me for?” Sharon asks. 

“Lettin’ you down,” Brenda says. “Even if it wasn’t my fault.”

She has her straw free and plunges it into the milkshake, takes a big sip. 

It’s cold and sweet and chocolatey and the bourbon is an aftertaste, but a good one. 

“Wow,” she says. 

“And your husband?” Sharon says, clearly unwilling to let this unpleasant conversational thread go. “What did he think about Charlie wanting to stay?”

“Uh,” Brenda says, glancing out to see if the server is going to save her by delivering their food, but she’s nowhere to be seen. “He said when he wanted kids, he didn’t mean someone else’s.”

“I’m sorry, he said _what_?” Sharon asks. 

“Men,” Brenda says. “So fussy about things.” Sharon still looks like she’s smelled something unpleasant. Her pretty features twisted into something menacing. “It doesn’t matter. I told him we aren’t havin’ kids at all, so it was nothin’ to worry about.” 

Sharon makes some sort of noise low in her throat. 

“Drink your milkshake, Captain,” Brenda says. “Before it melts.”

In the end, Brenda drinks far more of hers than the Captain, and so Sharon drives her home instead of back to the parking garage to get her car.

“I’ll pick you up in the morning,” she says. “You’re on my way.”

“No I’m not,” Brenda says, shouldering her bag. 

“No,” Sharon says. “But that’s a thing people say.”

“Well, thank you,” Brenda says. “For the ride and all the rest of it.”

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” she says. “I’ll text when I leave, okay?”

“Okay,” Brenda says.

When Brenda lets herself in, Fritz is standing at the kitchen sink, looking at the window.

“Who was that?” he says. 

“Captain Raydor,” Brenda says. “I’m tired, I’m goin’ to bed.”

She shuts herself in the bathroom before he can ask any follow up questions. She wants to brush her teeth right away, scrub the sweet booze scent off her breath so that he doesn’t ask her where she’s been, what she’s been doing, so he can’t look at her like he does when she gets wine drunk on too many glasses of merlot. Upset, brooding, jealous. 

Like someone about to start a fire.


	8. like it's the only thing i'll ever do

_You don't have to say you love me_  
_You don't have to say nothing_  
_You don't have to say you're mine_

**Adore You - Harry Styles**

*

Sharon spends Thanksgiving alone, though she does have dinner with Andrea Hobbs the day after. Emily never comes home for Thanksgiving and most years doesn’t come home for Christmas either, since that’s always a busy performance season. Ricky comes home more often, but had begged out of this one, promising to come home for at least three days around Christmas. 

It’s not like she couldn’t find someone to invite her to their gathering if she’d wanted to, but it seems easier to just stay in. She opens a bottle of chardonnay around three and cooks herself a chicken breast. Peels and cuts up potatoes, boils them, makes some mashed potatoes easily enough and then just gravy from a packet. Green beans in a pan on the stove with some lemon and salt and pepper so they’re fresh and bright green, cooked enough to be soft but not entirely lose their crunch. Hawaiian rolls out of the orange bag and that’s thanksgiving for one. It takes less than an hour and doesn’t destroy her kitchen. 

The next day, when she meets Andrea at the restaurant, she knows that the first question she’s going to ask her is about how her holiday was and she thinks seriously about lying, thinks about what the Chief would say in her situation. Make up some little fib just to make life float on a little easier. 

But she can’t bring herself to do it. 

“I like my solitude,” Sharon says, when Andrea expresses concern across the basket of bread between them. “It was kind of nice, actually. To have a restful day off.” She shakes her head. “Anyway, how was yours? How is Michelle?”

“Oh, she’s fine, she says hi and sorry she couldn’t come. She booked a speaking role on that show _Castle_. So she’s very excited about that.”

“Good for her,” Sharon says. “I know the officer who consults for them.”

“You know what, I hear that's lucrative. You should get in that game!” Andrea says. “Who knows LAPD procedure better than you?”

“I know he makes more doing the consulting than he does from his LAPD paycheck,” she says with a chuckle. “But I wouldn’t have the time. Major Crimes is… full time. Always on call.”

“Do you hate it?” Andrea asks sympathetically. 

Sharon leans in a little. “You know what? I don’t. I like it a lot, actually.”

“Really?” Andrea asks. 

“It surprised me too,” Sharon admits. “But I find it so interesting.”

“And what about Chief beautiful blonde beauty pageant queen from Savannah or wherever?” Andrea asks. 

“Atlanta,” Sharon says, picking up her menu. They eat here all the time, she’s going to get the same salad she always orders but she doesn’t want to hear Andrea trash talk the Chief. 

“Oh, sorry, Atlanta,” Andrea corrects. “She seems like a handful.” Sharon can tell that Andrea is still a little annoyed that her simple allocution of James Clark had gone so sideways because of Chief Johnson’s attention to detail.

“She’s… the most fascinating person I have ever met,” Sharon says, defaulting once again to honesty. “The way she gets results is unorthodox but effective and her mind, it truly is on another level… I’ve just never met anyone like her.” She sets the menu down delicately. Looks up at Andrea who is staring back at her, bemused.

“Oh, _Sharon_ ,” Andrea says softly.

“No, it’s not like that,” Sharon says.

“Honey,” Andrea says. 

“No, seriously,” Sharon says. “It’s a professional fascination, I assure you. And anyway, she’s married.” 

“Uh huh,” Andrea says. “Sure, it’s just that I’ve never seen you talk about anyone like that, ever, in the ten years we’ve been friends.”

“I’m not interested in a romantic life,” Sharon reiterates. “You know that.”

“I know you say that,” Andrea says. “It might even be true, I don’t know, but even you aren’t immune to pretty Deputy Chiefs who materialize to save your career.”

“You’ve called her pretty twice,” Sharon says. “Maybe it’s you we should be worried about.” 

“She’s not my type,” Andrea says, plucking a roll from the basket between them, finally giving in. She tears the roll in half, exposing the fluffy inside. “High femme. Long hair, heels, florals. Oh wait, that’s _your_ type.” 

“I don’t have a type, I dated one woman, one time,” Sharon says. “And it was a disaster.”

“Not because she was a woman,” Andrea says, her tone more gentle now. 

After years of daydreaming and wondering and yearning and convincing herself that it was not something she wanted or needed, Sharon had finally given in and allowed Andrea to set her up on a date. With a woman. And for two months, she’d been so happy and fulfilled and had been thinking about how was was going to accommodate this woman long term, how she was going to rearrange her life for this new phase, how she was going to tell her children and then… the woman had decided that she didn’t really want to take on a recent convert like Sharon after all. Had broken up with her and moved out of state, like Sharon was some sort of plague to outrun. 

She still doesn’t really understand what she did wrong. 

“I’m fine,” Sharon says now. “Live and learn.”

Andrea shrugs. “Okay.”

“Her husband is a real piece of shit though,” Sharon says. “The Chief’s, I mean.”

“Really? The FBI agent?” Andrea asks.

“Yeah,” Sharon says.

“Really,” she says. “That’s a shame.”

“Yes,” Sharon agrees, watching the waiter come towards them. “It is.”

oooo

The post-thanksgiving lull doesn’t last long. They roll out after midnight because a woman gets her throat cut in her own backyard. These middle of the night rollouts are the hardest on Sharon. She’s a morning person, she feels unhelpful and off her game. Tired and irritated. She has to put on professional clothing despite the hour, because no one trusts the cops if they show up in jeans. Her only concession is her hair - she’d picked makeup over hair, slapping on some concealer and blush and mascara and leaving her hair as is. She’s started showering at night now, letting it air dry and fixing it up in the mornings with her curling iron or her flat iron.

So now, her wavy hair is pulled back and low on her neck, fly aways pinned into place, except the shorter pieces in the front. 

Chief Johnson, of course, looks like it’s one o’clock in the afternoon and all the guys are in suits and she’s just not sure how they turn up looking like this when she feels like there’s sand in her eyes. 

Seeing the blood and the open gash on the woman’s neck certainly wakes her up, though. It’s a sobering death, an angry one, too. 

Chief Johnson is in what Sharon would call rare form for anyone else, but is just standard for the Chief. It takes her ten minutes before she’s bamboozling the husband to sign away his rights and let them in the house. He’s obviously drunk, babbling about his wife being killed by a ninja. Once he signs the form, Chief Johnson looks at Sharon, waiting for the reprimand, but Sharon just raises her hands in surrender. 

“Your house, your rules, Chief,” she says. “I’m just here to help.” 

Maybe Sharon has been too hard on her, because the Chief looks relieved. “Okay. Thank you.” She turns back to the husband. “Mr. Price, Lieutenant Tao might have explained to you that one of the things we do in Crisis Response is encourage the families of victims to speak freely. So I’m gonna need you to go over everything with him again, okay? He’s going to take you downtown.”

Tao makes a minute expression of frustration while his back is to the husband and then makes his face sympathetic, yet pleasant and turns around. 

“Let’s get some of your things,” he says, leading the man back into his house.

“Captain, let’s leave the rest of them here,” Chief Johnson says. “I’d like to beat Mr. Price back to the station. Julio is compiling all the police reports from here to five miles out, so you and I can go through those while we wait. You can drive?”

“Sure thing,” she says. 

Sharon’s been chauffeuring the Chief around more and more lately and Sharon can’t help but wonder if David Gabriel is starting to resent her a little. The Chief says, “I have my cell!” over her shoulder as they walk away and when Sharon looks back, there’s David, standing there watching them go. She gives him a little wave. A little finger ripple. 

She doesn’t mean to gloat, but if her rank buys her anything, it should be the front seat and the Chief’s ear at the very least. Her adrenaline starts to fail her a little when they get to the car, though. The moment she sits in the driver’s seat, she’s tired and keeps having to swallow yawns. But swallowing them makes her eyes run, so she pushes her glasses up and dabs at them with her sleeve before turning the car on. 

“You gonna make it?” the Chief asks. 

“Yes,” she says. “I was never good at the middle of the night roll outs, that’s all.”

“You probably get up at 6:30 am on a weekend,” Brenda says.

Sharon laughs, pulling the car out onto the road. “If I’m lucky!”

“Let’s stop and get coffee on the way, the good stuff, not that sludge Lieutenant Provenza brews,” the Chief says. 

“I thought you wanted to beat the husband back,” Sharon says. She’s trying to remember how to get out of this neighborhood, back onto a more familiar street. 

“We will,” she says. “I know Tao. We will.” 

Sharon hesitates at a stop sign.

“My gut says right, so go left,” the Chief says. 

Sharon turns left and then can see the main road ahead. 

“Couldn’t find my rear end with two hands and a map,” she says. “Embarrassin’ really.” 

“It’s a sign of intelligence,” Sharon says. “Your brain is occupied with other things, that’s why you aren’t thinking about directions or your surroundings.” 

“Is that true?” the Chief asks skeptically.

Sharon smirks. “I don’t know. Maybe. Seems like it could be though, doesn’t it?”

The Chief reaches out and swats her arm lightly. “I never can tell when you’re lyin’ to me!”

“Usually I’m not!” she says. 

“I’m supposed to be good at readin’ people, Captain, but I just can’t always tell about you,” she says. And then sighs, leans her head back against the headrest and closes her eyes. “These rollouts used to be easier for me, I will admit.” 

And when she pulls into the Starbucks parking lot, she says, “Stay here, keep your eyes closed, I’ll only be a minute.” 

The sun is still just a distant glow on the horizon, the world in front of her flat and blue. This Starbucks isn’t the closest one to the PAB, but it is open twenty four hours, and when she enters, she’s not the only one inside. 

She sways a little on her feet while she’s deciding.

“Hi, welcome to Starbucks,” says the woman at the register. “Ooh, long night?”

“Yes and getting longer,” Sharon says ruefully. “Can I have a venti mocha with extra whipped cream and a grande nonfat sugar free vanilla latte?”

“You got it,” she says. Sharon digs through her purse for her wallet and hands her credit card over. The woman swipes it and hands it back. 

And when the drinks are ready, the barista, a different woman, slides two venti drinks across the bar. “I made your latte extra big on accident,” she says with a wink. “Have a great day.” 

“Thank you,” Sharon says gratefully. 

In the car, the Chief sits up with a jolt when Sharon opens the door and leans in to hand her one of the coffees so she can grab the other one from the roof of the car and get back in, tucking her purse back onto the back seat. 

“Thank you, Sharon,” she says, and takes a sip before making a face. “Oh, it’s…”

“Here,” Sharon says, taking her coffee and handing her the one she’s holding instead. “That’s mine. This is yours.” 

The Chief tries the new coffee and her eyes flutter closed. “Yes, that’s better. How did you know what I’d like?”

“Everyone knows with you, it’s chocolate every time,” Sharon says. She starts the car and takes a drink of her own coffee, despite knowing that Chief's lips had touched the very same spot only moments before. For the whole drive back to the PAB, she just doesn’t think about that at all. 

oooo

Sharon can tell that the detective coming out from El Paso is making the Chief a little twitchy. It’s always a delicate thing, when investigations overlap. She’s had to handle those cases before, when two divisions had turf disagreements that turned into physical skirmishes. Those always triggered an internal investigation when meant she had to spend time figuring out which man-child threw the first punch because no one had ever taught him how to share. 

It’s even more delicate when it’s, say, the police and the sheriff or the LAPD and the FBI. An example she sees time and again since coming to Major Crimes. 

The Chief hasn’t been quite herself since Detective Sanchez interrupted her interrogation of the dead woman’s husband to report that perhaps the husband’s story of a ninja was not so far fetched. The Chief likes control, Sharon knows, and she’s getting information thrown at her faster than she can process it. Sharon and Julio had combed through the reports and he’d found the 911 call just four miles away from the Price home with a similar report of a man in black.

“You found it,” Sharon had said. “You tell her.”

Julio had given her a narrow-eyed look but had acquiesced. 

Detective Curt Landry is exactly why Sharon has never left California. She could have a much more luxurious lifestyle in a state with a lower cost of living, could probably have a higher rank for it, too, but for as frustrating as the LAPD can be, outside of the golden state are more men like Detective Landry than she could stomach. 

When he shows up with his boots and his cowboy hat and his bolo tie, she’s half convinced that he’s putting it on a little thick for their benefit. Sharon had sent the Chief home - had aggressively suggested, anyway - so she could shower and change, had overseen the investigation in her absence. It was all legwork at the moment. Patrol cars had an APB for their suspect, however, now that the sun has come up, she knows that they’ll come up empty, without Detective Landry telling them so in his condescendingly slow drawl. 

He arrives at the station before the Chief returns, which is unfortunate, and Sharon worries that will only contribute to the Chief’s shaky feeling on this case. She and Chief Johnson have been getting along well enough, finding their groove, but she doesn’t want to be blamed for this timing. 

“And you must be Deputy Chief Johnson,” Landry says to her when Provenza leads him over, already looking irritated. “Not what I expected, exactly, but I can’t rightly complain.”

“I am not Chief Johnson,” she says, tamping down her instinct to drive her heel into his insole. It wouldn’t work anyway, not in those boots. “I’m Captain Sharon Raydor, but Chief Johnson will be back shortly.”

“No, ma’am, you surely aren’t her, I would have remembered a voice like that,” he says and has the audacity to tip his hat at her.

“Okay, that’s enough of that,” Flynn says, coming over to stand next to her. “I’ll show you where you can wait until the Chief gets back.” 

Flynn must not like Detective Landry much either to step in to defend Sharon’s honor. She doesn’t need Flynn’s misplaced chivalry and she can handle men like Landry herself if need be, but she is tired and now half starved so she takes the interception without complaint. 

“Captain,” Gabriel says from his desk, a phone to his ear. “We’re ordering out. Denver omelet?”

“Yes, thank you,” she says, mildly touched that not only had they included her, he remembered her last order. It served them well to function as a cohesive unit while under the scrutiny of an outsider. David Gabriel knows that and even someone like Flynn knows it, hence his stepping in. 

She slips into the restroom to pee and to assess the damages of three hours of sleep. It’s not great, she thinks, considering her reflection. The absolutely terrible lighting in these restrooms serves no one, but right now it’s highlighting the dark circles under her eyes and she looks paler than normal. She takes out her hair from the elastic holding it back because it’s been pulled so tightly that it’s contributing, surely, to the dull thudding behind her eyes. 

The top layer is straight enough, but the underneath layers had dried all kinked up, so she can’t leave it down. Sighing, she pulls it back again but more loosely, this time. It is what it is. 

When the Chief returns, looking redressed but not quite refreshed, she comes with some under the table FBI assistance that helps them move things along. Detective Landry doesn’t pull that smarmy act on Chief Johnson, maybe because he saw that it had fallen so flat with Sharon or maybe because she simply isn’t his type, but that seems unlikely. It’s hard to imagine that Brenda Leigh Johnson wouldn’t be anyone’s type. 

Instead they strike a deal. Landry wants Major Crimes to help him catch this ninja, obviously a white man with serious problems who can’t make good choices, and then ship him off to Texas so they can, as Landry says, “try and fry him.” Chief Johnson wants him to stay in California where he can rot in prison, so they strike a deal. Best evidence wins. 

Brenda’s FBI information sends them back out onto the streets, looking for the red sports car from the 911 call that was sold to him in El Paso. Find the car, find the man, hopefully. Sharon drives the Chief, who spends most of the ride either digging in that enormous bag of hers or reading something out of a manila folder. All of it talking to herself. Sharon chimes in a few times, but can tell that while the Chief hears her, her contributions are not necessary in moving the Chief’s dialog forward. 

When she’d first started in Major Crimes, the Chief didn’t show her this part of her process. The manic, riffling, half-awake real time processing of information, no, this was all hidden away behind her wall of men so that it appeared to Sharon that the Chief just knew, just woke up one day, case solved. But this is the reality. The Chief is not a perfectly well-oiled crime solving machine and being good at something doesn’t mean it always coming out clean. 

“Right?” Chief Johnson asks as Sharon pulls on to the street, rolling up behind Flynn and Provenza’s car. It must be rhetorical because she answers her own question, saying, “Right,” again more confidently and throwing up the door to cross the street and inspect the red sports car in the driveway of what is hopefully a guilty man’s home.

oooo

Sharon has never been involved in an operation quite like the one trying to stop Jesse Ray Moore from crossing the state line. Either in scale or in how quickly it runs off the rails. This time, Sharon sits in the backseat behind Lieutenant Tao and Chief Johnson, happy to turn over driving privileges to him. Sanchez and Gabriel had left first, tearing down the 10 with lights on but they’re not far behind and if Sharon twists in her seat, she can see Provenza and Flynn in the car trailing them. 

She’d been happy to ride in the back, thinking maybe she’d get a few minutes of sleep in, but they’re driving so fast that there’s no way she can sleep and the tension of whether or not they’re going to get there in time is intense. 

They hear on the radio that an officer needs help and Sharon leans forward, sticking her face practically between the Chief and Tao, trying to hear. 

“Did they say he’s hanging off the side of the truck?” Tao says and the car jolts as he speeds up again. He must have the pedal all the way down at this point. The Chief reaches over and flips the switch to put their sirens on. She hears the bloop of Provenza doing the same. 

“Oh Julio,” Sharon says, thinking of the next 72 hours, thinking of Winnie Davis smugly coming down to interview him for whatever he’s about to do. “Be careful.” 

“Look, there’s the rig,” Tao says.

“It’s coming right for us,” the Chief says, concern in her voice. And then more urgently, “Mike!”

“I know,” he says. “Hang on.” 

He swerves out of the way that Sharon gets flung back against the seat and she’s grateful for her seatbelt as he turns around, wheels screeching and dust flying. 

“Jesus Christ,” the Chief says. Commentary or a prayer, she’s not sure. 

“Where are they going?” Sharon asks. There’s nowhere for the truck to stop, if it even were trying to stop. Her question answers itself as the truck plows into a long row of construction pylons and then finally it stops, lodged in a huge pile of dirt. Tao stops and jumps out, his car door open and the engine still on. 

“Julio!” he shouts. “Stop! Julio!” 

It takes her a minute to get her bearings. To unclip her seatbelt and reach between the front seats to twist the keys in the ignition and stop the engine. The Chief is already out of the car, too, gun in hand. She pockets the keys and gets out, squinting into the sun. Tao has Moore cuffed already. Julio is cradling his arm, his knuckles bloody, his face full of tiny cuts that come from broken glass. She can see glass glinting in his hair. 

Sharon’s heart is pounding, she feels rattled and full of adrenaline, yet so tired. Like a fat, black house fly buzzing around an empty room. 

The Chief touches her elbow, coming up behind her and startling her. 

“Come on,” she says, and now she sounds tired too. “You can drive us back.”

oooo

Detective Landry is not who Sharon would choose to spend the day with, cooped up in a little room, but that’s where she finds herself. She wouldn’t choose Commander Taylor or Chief Pope either, but everyone is crammed into the electronics room because no one can take their eyes off the monitors. 

Chief Johnson is an artist, the way that a good therapist is, the way that a great con man is. She eases each confession out of Jesse Ray Moore like a midwife eases out a second child, just as easy as anything, but everyone watching knows it’s not easy at all. 

They take a lunch break when Moore says that he’s tired, hungry, thirsty, needs to take a leak. Gabriel takes him to the restroom, Flynn goes downstairs to buy him a dry sandwich in a clear, plastic box.

“Brenda will eat with me right?” Sharon hears him ask Gabriel and so the Chief doesn’t even get twenty minutes to herself. She eats with him, matching him bite for bite. Sharon doesn’t know how she does it because listening to him talk all day has made her stomach churn. 

It takes seven hours for him to confess to sixteen murders, to place each souvenir on the map spread out in front of him, each token a dead woman along his trucking route. By the last one, the Chief is starting to look haggard. Sharon can see the cracks. Her curls not so bouncy, the sleeves of her sweater bunched up at her elbows, the tension making her shoulders climb, the way she’s grinding her teeth. 

“Well, bravo to her,” Landry says. “I think that just about does it, wouldn’t y’all say?”

“I think she won our little bet,” Provenza says, though he doesn’t sound quite as jolly as Landry.

“Oh, to be sure,” Landry admits. He’s holding something, a folder, and Sharon just has a bad feeling about what’s inside, about why he watched this whole day so calmly while they were all squirming and disgusted.

She slips out to wait in the hallway for the Chief to emerge. She does, before too long, saying gently, “I’ll be right back, Jesse, okay? You just sit tight!”

Sharon can see that the Chief is sweating and she sways a little when she shuts the door, her features going slack.

“Come on,” Sharon says, and holds open the restroom door. The Chief staggers through it. “Are you going to be sick?”

Brenda braces her hands on the counter, over the sink and seems to consider it. “No,” she says finally. “I don’t… I don’t think so.”

Sharon comes up behind her and says, “May I?” And then doesn't wait for an answer before putting her hands on the Chief’s neck, one palm on either side.

Chief Johnson sighs at the sensation. Sharon’s hands are always freezing. She has bad circulation and so she’s always a little cold and her fingers are always like ice. Emily used to love when Sharon did this after particularly grueling ballet classes. Ricky used to hate it. 

“Captain,” she says. 

“It’s okay, shh,” Sharon replies. She watches their reflection in the mirror; Brenda with her head hanging and her eyes closed and herself, behind her, looking like she’s about to wring her neck. The Chief's skin is hot in her hands, her blood pulsing just beneath the surface. After a few more minutes, she lets go. Grabs a paper towel from the dispenser and wets it with cold water and replaces it on the back of her neck. The Chief allows all of it. 

“What you did,” Sharon says, “was astounding.”

The Chief just makes a little noise of neither agreement or disagreement. 

“What do you say we send Detective Landry packing, hmm?” Sharon says. 

She nods, opens her eyes, stands up tall, looks herself over. 

“Yes,” she agrees. Sharon can see her steeling herself, putting the weakness away. 

Detective Landry is waiting for them in the hall with Pope. 

“Well done, ma’am,” he says.

“Thank you,” the Chief replies. “Your help was, uh, indispensable.”

“I don’t know about that,” he says.

“As far as taking Mr. Moore back to Texas…” Sharon says.

“I’ve been around long enough to know that no amount of DNA is going to trump a confession, let alone sixteen of them,” he says. 

“I’ve assured Detective Landry that once Moore serves his sixteen life sentences here in California, we’ll send him to Texas to be executed,” Pope says. 

“Appreciated,” Landry says. “But before I go, I figured you might want to take a look at the women who go along with those little souvenirs that you and Jesse Ray Moore plotted out along that map.”

He holds up the folder and Sharon can see exactly what he’s trying to do. He wants Chief Johnson to look at their faces, one by one. He wants her to want Jesse Ray Moore to fry. Chief Johnson is reaching for it, but Sharon snaps it out of his hand before she can take it. Fast enough that he looks at her, startled. 

“We’ll take it from here,” she says coldly. “Wouldn’t want you to miss your flight, Detective.” 

He gives her a long look, glances at Pope and then Chief Johnson waiting to see if either of them are going to step in, but neither do, though Pope is looking at her through narrow eyes. 

“Right,” Landry says and tips his hat to Pope and leaves. 

“Sharon,” Brenda says.

But she just takes the folder and shoves it through the swinging flap of the garbage can before anyone can open in.

“I’ve had enough of being manipulated by that man,” Sharon says to Pope. “You’ll see that Mr. Moore gets to where he needs to go, won’t you Chief Pope?”

“Sure,” he says. 

Chief Johnson allows herself to be led back to her office.

“Get your things,” Sharon says. “I’ll make sure the rest of the squad is squared away and then take you home.”

Chief Johnson waves her hand in front of her face. “That’s not… you don’t have to hover. You don’t have to fret. I’ll be fine.”

“Oh, I know you will,” Sharon says. “But isn’t it nice, every once in a great while, to just hand it over to someone willing? I know the kind of day that you’ve had, Chief, I watched happen. Let me drive you home. It’s the absolute least I can do.” 

Sharon sees her shoulders go down just a little. She nods. “Okay.” 

In the car, in this little set up that they’re growing accustomed to with Sharon at the wheel and the Chief in the passenger’s seat, she pulls the clip out of her hair and lets it fall down to her shoulders. Then says, “You could call me Brenda. Sometimes.”

“Sometimes,” Sharon says with a smirk.

“When we’re alone,” Brenda says.

“All right,” Sharon agrees.

“Did I do the right thing?” Brenda asks. “What’s worse, a lifetime in prison or death?”

“We know how bad one is, the other… an unknown,” Sharon says. “But I do know that Detective Landry was working for his own interests. To me, you did the right thing.” 

She sighs, putting her hand into her hair and giving it a good shake, trying to loosen it where it’s been tight against her head all day. 

When they pull up to the duplex, Agent Howard’s black SUV is parked in the driveway. Sharon parks on the street. 

“Sleep it off,” she says. 

“Do you want to come in?” Brenda asks. 

“I don’t think so,” Sharon says. 

“You could… we could have a drink or…” But here she trails off because while Sharon can offer her these small kindnesses, and is willing, she can’t get involved in whatever goes on behind the closed doors of this marriage. 

“I will some other time,” Sharon says. “Goodnight, Brenda.” 

“Night, Captain,” she says and pushes open the heavy door, grabs her bag. Sharon leans over to watch her climb the steps up to her kitchen door. 

She catches a glance, when Brenda opens the door, of Agent Howard right inside, like he’d been standing at the window, waiting for her, watching them. He knows that she sees him because when Brenda disappears inside, he stands in the doorway and gives her a wave, though she would not call his expression particularly friendly. 

She gives a courtesy wave back and drives away.


End file.
